Elio has had a few eras in its marketing campaign. The first trailers focused on a little boy’s obsession with outer space, namely being abducted. The second trailers, just months out from the debut of the film were much more about the friendship between Elio and a very cute, toothy caterpillar thing. The film’s opened this weekend with the lowest opening weekend box office ever for Disney, which some have suggested bodes poorly for Disney originals, but really probably says more about the current trends toward sequels and IP-based films than anything else. The film is absolutely entertaining. It’s chief virtues are the clone humor (upbeat, violent, and creepy–lethal combination) and the montages of budding friendship, which are always great.
There are some ways, commented upon by others, in which the movie feels a little “programmatic” once we get to space. The second act of the movie feels a lot like a rehash of the 2005 Chicken Little movie in which aliens are given a free pass to really wreak havoc on Earth because they’re “doing it for the kids”. In Elio (spoiler), there isn’t a lot of resentment for or reflection by Raymond’s older brother Robert Barone at the end when he’s kind of integrated into the galactic commonverse or whatever they call it. They, much like in Trolls World Tour, actually, don’t ask that many questions about who is going to rebuild their home or remunerate them for the trauma caused by burning down their station, but bygones are bygone or whatever. Elio himself has the low self esteem to reconnect with his one-time bully when he needs help at the end as well and he doesn’t really investigate how a guy who initially asked for clarification on not hurting Elio on his first day of boarding school could then eventually find himself restraining Elio by an arm while he gets pummeled by another kid. But if Elio doesn’t care, I don’t either!
Others have noted some lovely homages to other sci fi movies like Close Encounters and The Thing in the movie, which sounds absolutely darling. This movie has a LOT of sad snuggling moments in it and it even almost kills the puppy, like it’s not fucking around at all when it comes to emotionally abusing you as an audience member, and though the film feels pretty recycled in its second half, it has some absolutely banger jokes of senseless violence and savage emotional awareness.
