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

Like the 11-year-old title character of “Elio,” Pixar’s latest original is small and cute. Nothing wrong with that. It’s time to accept that gone are the days of “WALL-E,” “Up” and “Ratatouille,” when the Disney-owned animation studio had a stratospherically imaginative and artful vision that once put it firmly in the Best Picture conversation.

The latest animation from Pixar has been in the pipe for quite some time, and while that's not so strange for such a labor-intensive production, it's telling that the finished version bears little resemblance,