It’s almost as though the contours of what made Pixar great have been copied out here in vague watercolour.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 18, 2024

Gentle and humane but never raw or vulnerable.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 13, 2023

There are tonal parallels with Pixar’s Inside Out and Zootropolis, but while it has a peppy visual energy, Elemental lacks the wildly inventive storytelling of the former and the laughs of the latter.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 9, 2023

A bit like Inside Out meets Zootropolis – but not as fully worked out as either – it’s a movie of lovely, radiant moments.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 7, 2023

Busy, zany and sincere, the movie does a perfectly good job with the stuff of urban culture clash. But it is also fatally unfunny, and gets more so with every weird contrivance it whips up.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 6, 2023

The problem is that there’s not enough storytelling muscle here for the allusion to really land.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 6, 2023

Surely a reality where the elements are in charge should be more inventive, not limited by the trappings of capitalism and gender norms?

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 6, 2023

Elemental is overstuffed and inconsistent — but packed with enough moving sentiment, gorgeous design and punchy voice performances to mean it still burns bright.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 5, 2023

A movie that encourages kids to be open-minded needed to be laid on our culturally divided doorsteps. Peter Sohn should take a bow.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 29, 2023

The details of it are really beautiful.

| Jun 28, 2023

Especially coming from a studio that used to be so terrifyingly fastidious about its world-building, the internal logic of Element City is wobbly at best.

| Jun 27, 2023

As slight as it is, I found Elemental to be adorable.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 26, 2023

Disney’s latest venture Elemental will make your heart melt, even if it’s not Pixar’s best.

| Jun 23, 2023

A certain sweet, unworldly idealism in Elemental survives, the keynote of optimism – and this is the flame that Pixar has to keep alive.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 19, 2023

It’s a muddle, frankly, and the beauty of the animation can’t wholly compensate, especially given the mostly witless dialogue and the fact the traditional Pixar ease with plot construction seems to have evaporated.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 17, 2023

Elemental's story of earth, wind, fire and water isn’t top-tier Pixar, but its screen-popping visuals carry the day.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 17, 2023

The animation is good without being spectacular. It’s fun to see fire, water, earth and air in human form. The flashback where Wade relives his childhood trauma with a sponge will make young and old laugh out loud.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 16, 2023

Elemental, despite being a tableau rich with marvelous imagery of a world populated by the four elements (fire, water, earth and air), relies on the simplest of storytelling hooks: getting the audience engrossed in a sweet romance.

| Jun 16, 2023

I was taken by the imaginative ways the animation explores societal inequities.

| Jun 16, 2023

The crafty cartoon wondrously animates disparate elements and shapes them into relatable characters.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 16, 2023