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.

Elio,” Pixar’s latest enterprise, falls somewhere in between. It’s not a groundbreaker on the risk-taking level of “WALL-E,” but better than the unfairly maligned “Lightyear.” What “Elio” does well is give us those patented Pixar feels,