I’m mildly obsessed with Elemental’s water-people hair

polygon.com:

Of all 2023’s surprise cinematic success stories — like Barbie out-grossing the mega-successful Avatar: The Way of Waterto become the year’s biggest box-office hit to date, or Cocaine Bear doing better in American theaters than the $125 million Shazam sequel — nothing’s been quite as surprising as Pixar’s Elemental quietly bucking the odds to become a stealth hit. Initially and widely dismissed as a flop after a poor opening weekend, Pixar’s latest lingered in multiplexes for months while other movies rapidly came and went, often hitting digital release before the butter on moviegoers’ popcorn had cooled. It made more than $480 million in theaters, then debuted on Disney Plus with what Disney claims was a record-breaking premiere weekend.

I personally credit the hair.

I’m not being entirely facetious here. Elemental is an emotional fantasy about immigration and assimilation, inspired by the family of director Peter Sohn, but couched in metaphors about earth, air, water, and fire people all trying to live in the same city together. There are a lot of reasons it might have caught viewers’ imaginations enough that they turned it into a word-of-mouth hit, from the relatable protagonist (Ember, an ambitious but hot-tempered young fire woman trying to carry on her family’s legacy) to the unlikely love story.

But it’s also a deeply flawed movie. Elemental is built around an improbable, impersonal conflict involving municipal bureaucracy, which distracts from the far more personal struggles and leaves them fighting for narrative space. The middle section sags, as Ember chases weepy, weird water person Wade around their city, trying to appeal a report he filed to the city about a plumbing violation at her father’s store. The