Awful Movies Wiki/Elemental (2023)

Elemental is an 2023 American computer-animated romantic comedy-drama film produced by Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios in association with Imagine Kids+Family, and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. The film was released in theaters in June 16, 2023.

Plot
In a city where fire, water, land, and air residents live together, a fiery young woman and a go-with-the-flow guy discover something elemental: how much they actually have in common.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) While decent, the animation is rather cheap and low-quality, even for a Pixar movie! It also feels like it came from a direct-to-video film rather than a feature-length animated film released in theaters.
 * 2) * Despite being beautiful, the textures and rendering can sometimes go off-model.
 * 3) * Some characters tend to move in extremely strange ways, like Robert Cloudson. When his head moves, it appears to be bulging out of his neck rather than moving like any other character's heads.
 * 4) * On top of that, there are even a few animation errors. One example is when Wade looks at the sky, his right eyeball can be seen sticking out of his head.
 * 5) * The situation doesn't help that the crew had to use over 25,000 computers for the entire movie!
 * 6) Mediocre voice acting, and the voice actors sounds like they're not even trying.
 * 7) * Wade's voice is insufferable at best, as his microphone fades constantly as he's talking, making it harder for people to understand.
 * 8) * In fact, one of his voice clips during the climax is completely reused from Bing Bong from Inside Out, saying "Let's flip this bird!", proving that the voice mixing department is lazier than expected, and the fact that they both have different voice actors just pushes this problem even further.
 * 9) Walter is mostly just filler for the crew's attempt to add a villain, as he's mostly seen bullying Ember and Wade at times, criticizing them for the wrong reasons. His voice even sounds suspiciously similar to Donald Duck (it doesn't help that his voice actor wasn't shown in the credits for that film).
 * 10) Pointless pop-culture references and product placement, while better than Ralph Breaks the Internet, feels extremely out of place for a Pixar movie, such as Cold Stone Creamery, XBOX Series X, Pepsi, YouTube, and even Ethan Phatter Productions.
 * 11) * One TV spot used a extremely outdated song titled "Hot N Cold" by Katy Perry. It's bad enough that some people stopped listening to that song in the mid-2010's, so it's a surprise to hear that song in the trailer anyway.
 * 12) Ember's personality is never changed at the end of this film, as with most terrible romantic comedies.
 * 13) There were some innuendos, TBA.
 * 14) During the climax, there was a scene where Wade vomited water, then he got skinnier, which is literally both strange and disgusting.
 * 15) In the scene where Ember rages at Wade for "accidentally" destroying her temper, she almost drops the F-BOMB, before Wade quickly covers Ember's mouth.
 * 16) The film is downright a ripoff of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, with Ember being a ripoff of Toula, Wade being a ripoff of Ian, Bernie being a ripoff of Gus, Cinder being a ripoff of Maria, and Clod being a ripoff of Nikkos. The plot also ripoffs off that of  My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Bernie and Cinder want Ember to take over the family business just like how Gus and Maria want Toula to take over the restaurant. Neither character (Ember and Toula) wants to takeover and instead want to pursue their own thing. They fall in love someone outside their own (Wade and Ian) in the process. The daughters (Ember and Toula) attempt to keep their relationship secret from their parents. Their parents (Bernie and Cinder, Gus and Maria) do not approve of their daughters love interest and there daughter does everything they can to get them to accept their love interest. The mother (Cinder and Maria) eventually accept their daughters love interest, but the father (Bernie and Gus) still have a hard time accepting them. Furthermore, Ember teaching Wade how to speak fire language is a ripoff of Toula teaching Ian how to speak Greek.
 * 17) False advertising: A Canadian TV spot claimed that it's "the greatest film Pixar has ever made", even though it's not.

Good Qualities

 * 1) Peter Sohn actually does a decent job at directing, despite all the flaws listed above.
 * 2) Aside from Wade and Ember, some likable characters, such as the side-characters.
 * 3) Ember's backstory comes off as quite sad, but relatable to the audience, especially since her grandmother broke up with her now deceased father, and Ember lived in an orphanage until a different old fire lady raised her.
 * 4) There are a few scenes that come off as unintentionally hilarious, such as Wade trying to calm down Ember by singing him a song about how annoying, and dumb he is.
 * 5) The storyline could've actually worked, if it hadn't been for this film's utter stupidity.

Trivia

 * Peter Sohn originally considered a completely different adult animation movie for Pixar. However, he immediately regretted that idea before production had began.