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

Zoe Saldaña and Brad Garrett are among the voice cast for the animated feature about a young boy who, feeling out of place on Earth, dreams of getting abducted by aliens.

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.