Elemental (PG)
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This was accompanied theatrically by the short film Carl's Date.

The movie is set in a world where people are made of one of four elements: fire, water, air, and earth (which includes plant life). The story begins with a Firish couple, who immigrate to Element City from Fire Land, and are given new, English names: Bernie and his wife, Cinder. It takes them awhile to find a home, because there seems to be racism against Fire people (I'm almost surprised I saw no signs saying "No Firish need apply"). But they finally do find a home, and open a shop called the Fireplace. They also have a daughter named Ember, who grows up and becomes one of the two protagonists of the story. She works in the Fireplace, and her dad always says she'll take over "when she's ready". This mostly means learning to control her temper, which often gets out of control and does damage to the shop when she flares up.

One day, one of Ember's outbursts cracks a water pipe and floods the basement. In addition to normal water, a Water person named Wade emerges from the pipe, having gotten sucked into the plumbing while inspecting a problem elsewhere in the city. There shouldn't even be any water in the Firetown section of Element City, so Wade is trying to find where it came from. Meanwhile, he notes several building code violations in the shop, which he reports to his boss, an Air person named Gale, despite Ember's attempt to stop him. Gale agrees to ignore the citations if Ember and Wade can find and fix the source of the water problem by Friday. In the course of their time together, Ember and Wade become friendly, and eventually fall in love. Wade's family is welcoming toward Ember, albeit while saying some problematic things. But she has to hide her relationship with Wade from her own parents, because her father is prejudiced against Water people, and earlier in the movie Ember had lied to him that Wade was responsible for the burst pipe in the Fireplace. Meanwhile, Ember comes to realize she doesn't want to take over the shop when her father retires, but doesn't want to tell him that, because she feels a great responsibility to make a sacrifice for him.

Well, that's about all I want to say about the plot. I'm leaving out lots of details, but it does have a pretty happy ending. I think the movie has a good message about overcoming prejudices (it seems like people of every element hold some degree of racism against other elements), and I guess about accepting immigrants. Aside from that, the animation is pretty cool, and the love story isn't bad. In fact I'd say every "element" of the story is good (pun intended). I do think there's some weirdness, like Fire people eating wood, when wood is often part of the bodies of Earth people. But I suppose if there can be water, air, and fire that doesn't come from people, there could just as well be wood that doesn't come from people, too. Also I want to note that there's a very minor character named Ghibli, which is cool because this story does seem a little bit like the kind of movie Studio Ghibli would make. And I don't really know what else to say. I liked the movie, but not as much as I like (or love) most Pixar movies.