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.

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.