ELIO

Name: ELIO
Item: ELIO
Author: Review

"You Are Not Alone"

Family Content: -1 Caution advised for older children, including teenagers, and sensitive adults.

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

ELIO is an animated movie about a boy on Earth named Elio, who lost his parents in a car accident, wants to be abducted by aliens! The aliens confuse him with being Earth’s supreme leader. To stay in space, he boldly offers to protect his newfound community from Lord Grigon, a world destroying war general. Elio befriends the general’s son, Glordon. They must decide whether to enjoy their new friendship, or return to their respective families. Eventually, the two friends learn wonderful lessons about love and the importance of family.

ELIO is very engaging and beautifully made, with vibrant colors and a fantastic soundtrack. It has many comedic, action-packed, emotional elements. The movie shows a strong amount of moral, redemptive themes such as kindness, family bonds, love, and sacrifice, as well as allegorical death, baptism and resurrection. However, ELIO has multiple violent scenes that may be scary to a younger audience. Also, the movies solves the question “are we alone” with aliens; whereas, Jesus Christ God and Creator solved it by his incarnation. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution for younger and older pre-teenage children.

Content:

(BB, CC, V, N, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Strong moral, redemptive views of kindness, sacrifice, family bonds, and learning to cope with loss, , a well as allegorical death, baptism and resurrection, but suggests that aliens not the Creator Jesus Christ show we are not alone in the universe;

Foul Language:

No human obscenities or profanities, but there are multiple instances of rude speech throughout, as well as a scene where Elio asks if a fellow alien knows “bad words” in his made-up language, to which the alien responds, plus there’s two “butt” jokes;

Violence:

There are many scenes during this movie that involve peril, during the beginning of the movie, a boy accidentally breaks Elios device, in which they proceed to fight, with Elio kicking and biting the other boy, and the other buy seriously hurting one of Elio’s eyes, at a summer camp, some boys pick a fight with Elio, Lord Grigon uses laser weapons to shoot small aliens for sport, and insists on Elio join him, Lord Grigon attacks the alien community, destroying the facility and capturing the other aliens with brute force, when trying to return Glordon back to space, Elio and his aunt have to attack the fellow military personnel by throwing objects at them, when returning to space, Elio’s spaceship gets attacked by debris;

Sex:

No sex;

Nudity:

Natural animal, alien nudity;

Alcohol Use:

No overt alcohol use, but there’s a comical where young title character and his young alien friend drink alien “glorp” and over consume it, throwing it up later, which could be seen as an alcoholic parallel;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

No smoking or drugs; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

The young title character lies multiple times so that the aliens don’t find out his true identity, but his lie is discovered and rebuked.

More Detail:

ELIO is an exciting animated movie where a young middle schooler who loves outer space gets his desire to be abducted by aliens, thus finding friendship and belonging. Having lost his parents in an accident, Elio sees himself not fitting on Earth and makes it his primary mission to make contact with space to find the place where he belongs. So, when he finally makes contact with extraterrestrial life, he sends them a message to take him away. The aliens receive his message and abduct him, mistaking him for the leader of Earth. Elio, overjoyed, thinks that’s the perfect place for him to finally fit. The aliens are kind and would like to accept Elio into their community, but they’re regrettably scared of another alien leader, Lord Grigon.

Lord Girgon, a seemingly fearless commander of war, is not accepted in the alien community, and vows to destroy the intergalactic community. Elio, afraid he will lose his only chance of fitting in, abruptly states that he will go speak to Lord Grigon and make things right.

While speaking to the war commander, Elio makes friends with the commander’s son, Glordon. They soon become an inseparable pair, and both confide in each other as true friends. They both have trouble fitting, and don’t want to return to their regular lives, and they make plans to stay together and fool their families. Their plans initially work out. They spend lots of time together having fun and enjoying themselves around the alien community.

However, both Elio and Glordon’s families were able to tell that their sons were not around. In space, Lord Grigon attacks the alien community, trying to find his son in the process. The aliens, seeing what Elio had done, send him home, and his aunt, Aunt Olga, is there looking for him. During the search of the space community, Glordon accidentally sends himself to Earth, and gets stuck there. Elio, realizing Glordon is unsafe on Earth, makes it his mission to return his new best friend back into outer space. In the end, Elio and Glordon end up learning how to find their place in both of their homes, on Earth and in space.

Overall, the ELIO is beautifully made, with vibrant colors and a fantastic orchestral soundtrack. The animation shows beautiful illustrations of outer space and intergalactic life. The story also follows the plot line of being loved by your family, which encourages viewers to learn and depend on their loved ones through hard and difficult times. With many comedic, action-packed, and emotional elements, the movie was very engaging and enjoyable to watch.

As for the general worldview, ELIO has many instances of showing Biblical standards, such as sacrifice, caring for those who are injured, friendship and love, and many other elements. Also, there are allegorical scenes of death, baptism and resurrection.

The movie opens with the question, are we alone; and, the aliens prove that we are not. However, the real answer which is the best news is that we are not alone and should know that since Jesus Christ, the Creator of everything, was incarnate on Earth to prove that to us and save us from our loneliness and sin.

Regrettably, there are multiple scenes that with scary aliens and scenes showing violent behavior that may be difficult/scary to a younger audience. Therefore, families should exercise caution when letting their younger children watch ELIO.

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Quality:

- Content: +2

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