Elemental

 Elemental is a cute Pixar love story that (once again) functions as commentary on the immigrant experience. In this case, it's got Aristotelian elements as stand-ins for ethnicities/cultures. So you've got people made of fire, people made of water, etc.

 The water, air (they look like clouds, which is cheating!) and earth people live together in seeming harmony in a huge, utopic metropolis called Element City. The fire people are much rarer; Their culture is a mix between a bunch of eastern cultures - there's a lot of the Chinese and Indian, a little Polynesian, a little Arabic maybe; That it's rooted in fantasy makes it lose specificity, but I guess more people in the foreign markets will identify with it. It's a shame they didn't dare come up with something a bit more alien or more original; I don't think what's here is cynical, but I don't think it works all that well, either.

 In any case, a couple from fire land come to town and, after running into some systemic discrimination (some well-intentioned, some not) they set up shop (literally; they build a shop) on a derelict part of town and become the seed (or kindling) of a thriving fire community.

 Ember (Leah Lewis), our protagonist, is set to inherit the store from her hard-working dad (Ronnie del Carmen). The only thing holding her back is her temper, which is literally explosive whenever she gets too stressed out. This gets her in trouble when a complicated chain of events leads to the basement of the store getting flooded, and with her getting mixed up with Wally (Mamoudou Athie), an... overtly emotional water-dude inspector from City Hall.

 Together they try to find out why there's water being routed to the fire neighbourhood. They learn about each other, they fall in love, they have a fight, etc. etc.

 It's a cute movie, and it can be very very funny when it wants to. It also does get a bit more sophisticated in the exploration of its themes than you'd expect: it touches on the obvious stuff, sure, but one of the main drives of the plot is the second-generation immigrant's guilt- the debt they feel to their parents for having sacrificed so much so they could have a better life. It's well handled, even if the answers it finds are pat. It's a kid's movie, after all.
 And there's a scene where Ember and her dad are denied entry somewhere that I thought was pretty devastating.

 Technically, it's a marvel: The city is as well realized as any Pixar metropolis, and there's more than a few beautiful scenes peppered throughout the film. All the actors (the most famous, at least to me, would be Catherine O'Hara in a minor role) do a great job, the character designs are cute and very distinctive, and there's a lot of imagination and humor on display everywhere.

 Overall, I did find it a bit underwhelming though. Maybe we're close to taking Pixar for granted, maybe I've been spoiled by all the years they put out classics pretty much back-to-back. But the script this time felt off. It's mostly fine moment-to-moment, but there were a few too-tidy resolutions, and the way it deploys a couple of deus ex machinas really put me out.

 I also had many, many problems with the 'rules' of the world. People make fun of Cars for having a world that doesn't make sense, but I don't really have a problem with it (despite disliking the films); the world is silly, but consistent. Thinking about why they have steering wheels and passenger doors is fun, but it's also kind of a dumb thing to criticize; it's part of the buy-in.

 Not so here. The rules don't make sense, which... in a world that includes sentient farts, I can roll with. But they're also very inconsistent. Why can ember handle some flammable substances but then can't seem to be able to avoid burning others? Why does Wade melt (evaporate?) sometimes but seems fine on other similar situations? The movie seems to be making everything up as it goes along without real consistency, which is a problem when these issues become plot points in the narrative. And that makes the drama feel arbitrary and at least on one instance, manipulative.

 Nothing fatal to my enjoyment of the movie. I'd consider this 'minor' Pixar... which, as usual, is still a good time.