Pixar trades soul-searching for star-seeking in its most whimsical — and least self-serious — original cartoon in over a decade.

If a movie is a bowl of breakfast cereal, “Elio” is Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs, and the audience is Calvin. The title hero is a Calvin, too: a hyper-imaginative orphaned boy who lives with an aunt and is desperate for the universe to send aliens to take him away from it all. This being Pixar, the universe obliges.

It’s pretty obvious that the original intention was to celebrate the outsider and make a point about finding one’s tribe, but somewhere along the line that all got lost, and we’re left with spectacular film about the vastness of infinity that ends up an Earthbound parable about family ties.