“Elemental” (2023)

Elemental

Grade: B

2020s-era Pixar Animation Studios lacks the imaginative spark it once had, and although Elemental hits the familiar beats — a couple laughs, a couple tears — the emotions just don’t hit as hard as they once did. A few more notes on Elemental:

Directing:

The computer animation of Elemental is brilliant from a technical standpoint — after all, it isn’t easy to personify fire. Directed by Peter Sohn (who also helmed Pixar’s charming yet forgettable The Good Dinosaur), the film does a good job establishing a setting, but the setting it establishes isn’t all that imaginative or detailed when compared to the studio’s past works. How many seconds did it take for Sohn’s team to come up with ‘Element City’?

Acting:

Elemental opts for a relatively unknown cast of voice actors rather than established movie stars (Catherine O’Hara is the biggest name), which means you have to wonder where the rest of that $200 million budget went (the uninspired Element City is basically just a cleaner New York). Nevertheless, the likes of Leah Lewis and Mamoudou Athie as Ember Lumen and Wade Ripple all do a good job and prove you don’t need major stars to carry an animated film.

Writing:

Pixar has already succeeded with the concepts of anthropomorphized feelings and anthropomorphized souls, so why not try anthropomorphized classical elements? Unlike Inside Out and Soul, however, Elemental doesn’t have much insight into the finer details of its created universe — the film might as well have been populated by human beings. Written by Sohn, Brenda Huesh, Kat Likkel and John Hoberg, the film is a 1990s rom-com at heart, with a fire girl and a water boy falling hopelessly in love. Then again, Elemental doesn’t have much insight into race relations (air and earth aren’t worth our time, huh?) or romance either. It’s as thin as … you guessed it … a ‘90s rom-com.

Music:

Thomas Newman’s warm score incorporates sitars, tabla and other Eastern-tinged percussion (in Elemental, Fire is somewhat representative of India/Asia/Middle East). Including a Lauv song, the music is perhaps the highlight of the film.

Ending (SPOILERS):

Ember and Wade get married, which is touching … that’s all that really matters in ’90 rom-coms. But the other subplots are rushed (Ember chooses not to run her family shop) or forgotten about entirely (the flood in the city has apparently subsided), not that they were all that important anyway. The ending is another example of Elemental’s thin fundamentals, which makes the 100-minute movie seem even more overlong in retrospect.

“You don’t have forever to say what you need to say.” – Wade Ripple

Why Elemental gets a B:

Elemental has a thin storyline and its premise is derivative of other (and better) Pixar films. However, the animation is good enough and the romance is cute enough to at least make the film worth watching once.

---