Oh I absolutely see that and it’s intentional, IMO.
I like the way Luca seems torn between the facets of his friendships with Alberto and Julia. They both engage with different aspects of his personality. It’s very true to real life relationships. You seldom find a one-stop-shop, soul mate type match. Whether a friendship or a romantic relationship, you often end up with someone who complements you while also matching you in certain key ways. And that’s often a good thing.
Monday, June 19, 2023
Just got back from seeing this and will share just a few spoiler-free thoughts:
This is one of the few Pixar films that has a romantic element and one of only two that I would consider to be primarily a love story (the other being WALL-E) and romance is more central to Elemental than WALL-E, IMO. This is refreshing since love has become rarer as an element (ha) of kids’ movies these days.
Overall, I liked it. Really well done. Not ready to rank it or rate it just yet. I will need to stew on it for a while.
I recommend you see it if you have the opportunity!
This doesn’t release here until July 7th.
I thought films all dropped at the same time these days, but apparently not this one.
Will try and see it through the summer holidays…
So after our rewatch, my family ranked each film based on our personal preference. Here are the results:
Top Three Favorites:
Me: Coco, Up, Inside Out
DW: Coco, Onward, Finding Nemo
DS11: WALL-E, Incredibles 2, Elemental
DD9: Cars 2, Turning Red, Elemental
DD6: Ratatouille, Turning Red, Elemental
DD4: The Incredibles, Incredibles 2, Turning Red
There may be a bit of recency bias with Elemental. Also, take DD4’s with a grain of salt. That girl can’t hold two thoughts in her head at once. 
Lowest-Rated Film (collectively):
A Bug’s Life
Highest-Rated Films (collectively):
Turning Red, Elemental, Coco
This was a fun little challenge for our family to complete! I recommend it if you’re family needs a task to get you through the summer. I think we’ll be moving on to Marvel movies next …
I love that!
Though if I’m being honest, my top three ranked are Toy Story 3, Coco, and Inside Out. (Wall-E comes in at #8!)
All good choices!
Haven’t looked at it, but was just fed this story in my Google News feed:
Ooh, it will be very interesting to compare this with Jeff’s ranking!
A lot of concurrence in this article with Jeff’s rankings, but BIG discrepancies in their #1 and #2 – Toy Story and WALL-E (further evidence of Jeff’s baffling blind spot on the latter).
Interesting list.
Opinions.
Everyone’s got 'em
Toy Story as number one is understandable given that it kicked things off and is very good. It’s just not one of my top favorites.
WALL-E is bold and very well made, but the second half is much weaker than the first half. I don’t think it deserves spot number two, even if looking purely at cinematic craft.
I haven’t gotten a chance to see Elemental yet - but I did go back and watch the Cars trilogy so I could do a full ranking as well (I’d never seen 3 and barely remembered 2).
5 Stars
Interesting! It looks like Cars and Luca diverge most from my rankings. But in each case I can see why each film would jive with some people better than others.
And I wonder how it would change if I rewatched them with nieces/nephews/small children. I feel like there’s sometimes more magic in the movies when you watch them with kids!
Is this related to residual ride trauma or solely because of the film? 
Funny enough we all like the film and the kids enjoyed ittbab, but one of them had to be at the bottom of the list I guess. 
My daughters just went to see Elemental together today. I don’t have actual wordy reviews from them but DD14 said it was fine, not one she’s in a hurry to watch again and DD10 said she liked it a lot. Kind of what I expected from them.
Honestly, my rankings would be vastly different from both yourself and @StinsyLinson (Cars 2 at the bottom???!! 
).
It just shows how each movie resonates with us in different ways. There’s something for everyone and what floats one person’s boat might not float everyone else’s.
I think Woody’s production story is an example of where/why Disney movies went off the rail. Disney wanted Woody to be a real turd. Not the flawed character that he is in the final movie, but mean, spiteful and a villain. Disney seems to want to add darkness to their movies. Exhibit A: Black Cauldron. With Pixar, since they weren’t completely under Disney’s thumb then, did some things like Disney wanted and then eventually said, No. Woody is disturbing like that (therefore the growth in the movie). This isn’t the only example of the darkness that Disney wanted.
