Elemental
I haven’t been too impressed with Pixar’s recent output. Films like Incredibles 2, Onward, and Turning Red have their moments, but 2015’s Inside Out was their last true masterpiece. Elemental does nothing to break that streak. I went in with low expectations, so I was mildly surprised at times. (The sequence where Ember and Wade travel underwater to see the Vivisteria flowers is quite beautiful while Thomas Newman’s soundtrack has some cool non-Western elements.) However, Elemental suffers from the same issue as the Cars movies: it’s really hard to suspend disbelief with this sort of anthropomorphic storytelling. It just raises too many questions. Elemental does poke fun at that with the chain-link fence gag, but are we really supposed to believe that clouds, trees, and walking puddles built a glass city? Where did the technology come from, especially since fire is treated with suspicion, even outright hostility? And since clouds are water, can air and water elements reincarnate between each state, thus becoming functionally immortal? If I must watch an anthropomorphic tale, I’ll stick with Zootopia, which touches on similar themes but is far more entertaining and well-made, and has a better love story than Ember and Wade’s. (And since I’m already curmudgeonly, I’ll just say it: Wade is arguably the most annoying Pixar protagonist to date.)