The Pixar movie, Elio, is one of my favorite kid’s movies. It hit theaters in June, 2025. The movie came out around the same time that How to Train Your Dragon and Lilo and Stitch, so it didn’t get much attention when it came out.

How to Train Your Dragon made 83.7 million dollars domestically in theaters, and 636 million dollars globally. Lilo and Stitch made even more, with 146 million dollars domestically and over 1 million dollars globally. Compared to Elio, with only 21 million dollars domestically and 35 million dollars globally, I don’t think it got nearly as much as attention as it deserves.

Elio is a Pixar animated film about an grieving boy who’s accidentally mistaken for Earth’s leader by aliens and is transported from Earth where he has to connect with a bunch of bizarre aliens and discover who he really is and where he truly belongs. 

I first saw it in theaters and despite it being a kid’s movie, it brought tears to my eyes. I could relate to the feeling of not belonging anywhere, and though I don’t want to be “beamed up” by aliens, I sometimes wish I could be anywhere than here. 

The movie got a score of 83% on rotten tomatoes, so that shows that people who watched it enjoyed the movie, but it was a shame that it didn’t get the attention that it deserved in the box office.  Not to say that How to Train Your Dragon and Lilo and Stitch were bad movies, but I was surprised by the lack of attention Elio got when it first came out.