Review of Elemental (2023) by Mattyice — 16 Jun 2023

Elemental is a film that sounds full of potential, but sadly is a poor showing from a Pixar studio that is all of a sudden struggling to find consistent good talent behind the camera outside of their veteran directors from the 90s-00s.

Elemental takes the worst of Pixar's worst offerings (namely Lightyear's boring plot and characters, Cars 2's lazy and just bad humor, and The Good Dinosaur's inconsistent animation, poor character designs, and surface level themes) and merges them into arguably its most underwhelming film yet.

Adding on to those flaws, the world building, while creative at points, just seems totally forced and doesn't work well from a basic concept, and the voice cast doesn't do the best job, which isn't surprising given just how little well-known actors and voice actors are involved in this project.

It's really a shame to see how far Pixar has fallen and how it, along with Disney's animation division as a whole, is getting outdone from an animation, thematic depth, and story perspective by so many other animated studios, something Pixar used to set the gold standard for.

I really hope they can bounce back, because Elemental might just be the studio's rock bottom.