Disney Pixar's Elemental

[Daniel]

New character posters and TV spot:





Finally get to hear Clod's voice! I dig it! He sounds adorable and almost how I imagined.

[Daniel]

A large banner exhibited at the Cannes Film Festival:




Love the water drop effect! Cool!

[Farerb]

[Daniel]

Wow, that was gorgeous. Score sounds amazing so far. The shot with the two crystals was stunning!

[Daniel]

First reactions are coming out from Cannes. Mixed, but mostly positive:

Peter Sohn’s ‘Elemental’ is a pure dream and a perfect ending to Cannes Film Festival. It’s colorful, vibrant, fiery, fluffy + fluid with brilliant animation and a great story on self-love, courage, living your true self and falling in love along the way. Fans will fawn over Ember and the warmth of her unconditional love and her fashion forward metallic outfits + Wade with his overflowing heart on this uplifting adventure. Absolute magic and the soundtrack is amazing. #Cannes2023 #CannesFilmFestival #Elemental

ELEMENTAL is not only one of the better Pixar films in recent memory but one of their best overall. This clever & emotional love story will warm your heart & make you cry. A moving tribute to immigrant parents with gorgeous animation. Thomas Newman's soothing score is magnificent.

Peter Sohn’s #Elemental burns bright with Pixar’s reliable mix of vibrant animation and imagination. The story has been done before (think Zootopia but with Water & Fire) but there’s charming characters, creative set-pieces & Newman’s gorgeous score is spiritual #Cannes2023

I was really charmed by Pixar’s latest #Elemental, a forbidden love story filled with Pixar’s most stunning world-building since Inside Out. The creativity on display is off the charts, even if the movie treads familiar themes and beats. Not top tier Pixar, but a good film!

[Ben]

Not so positive from THR. About what was expected, I think, and one can’t really argue with the opening paras:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie ... 1235502286

[Randall]

But really, how could you go wrong with a film from the director of The Good Dinosaur?

Yeah.

Actually, I do look forward to seeing this. The story is appealing, and the imagery looks great. However, I confess to also being underwhelmed by the last few Pixar films, even ones I was hugely looking forward to like Soul and Onward. It's been a while since I really loved a new Pixar movie. So, we'll see.

[Farerb]

So far it seems to get mixed reviews. It currently has 56 on Metacritic, though there are only 6 reviews, it's not a good start.

[Farerb]

‘Elemental’ Review: New Pixar Animation Is Visually Splendid, But Swamped In Syrupy Sentiment – Cannes Film Festival

What has fallen flat at Pixar? This is the innovative animation studio that pushed all before it in the first decade of this millennium, that invented a way of turning the plastic finish of digital animation to its advantage in the towering Toy Story, that was prepared to start a film with a 20-minute scene with no dialogue in Wall-E – and revealed that kids didn’t care – and that would make an adventure film with a hero aged 78 years young in UP!. Kids didn’t care about that either, as it turned out, because Carl Fredricksen was a grumpy-gramps adventurer who also didn’t care what others thought of him. Pixar always had something new up its collective artistic sleeve. And yet here they are, coming out with a film as dull-witted and syrupy as Elemental.

https://deadline.com/2023/05/elemental- ... 235381852/

[Ben]

What the heck is "UP!"…?

Although, to be fair, Up covertly wasn’t all just about a 78 year old man. That "non-dialogue" (that actually has plenty of dialogue…the point of the joke being that Ellie doesn’t ever stop talking!) opening largely deals with two young kids for most of it, and the rest of the film has another actual kid in there for the whole thing, as well as some funny talking dogs, a colorful bird, and lots of action. So that’s a lot of audience demos covered. Let's see everyone love Up so much (which I do) without those…er…elements.

As for Pixar generally, gee…it’s as if there used to be someone there that had a tighter grip (albeit maybe too tight, and inappropriately too much of a grip!) on the direction things should go. This is what happens when silly people do silly things…

[Farerb]

I was never crazy about Up to be honest.

[Daniel]

The "no-dialogue" part was aimed at Wall-E. Although that's not entirely truthful as you have "Hello, Dolly!" playing in the background, on his TV screen and the Buy n Large message on the monitors.

[Ben]

Ah, yeah, gotcha. But good point, too. I think that reviewer has indeed got mixed up with Up too, though, as I remember WALL-E being dialogue free for much more than just twenty minutes…?

[Daniel]

Yeah, a character doesn't actually talk until around the forty minute mark.

[James]

I'm not reading reviews so I don't get spoiled for plot points, but another rough one based on the headlines, this time from Variety:
https://variety.com/2023/film/reviews/e ... 235626948/

‘Elemental’ Review: A Hothead and a Water-Boy Fall for One Another in Pixar’s Overcomplicated Rom-Com

Trying to bring the high-concept charm of 'Inside Out' to the world of incompatible natural elements, 'The Good Dinosaur' director Peter Sohn's opposites-attract movie is a bit of a misfire.