Elemental - Movie Review

Critics Score - 9 of 10

General Audience Score - 9 of 10

Kids Score - 8 of 10

Gone are the days when Pixar Animation Studios could do no wrong. Over the past decade, even the bright spots of Soul, Toy Story 4, Turning Red and Coco have been mixed in with the mediocrity of Finding Dory, Onward and Luca and and even downright poor offerings like Cars 3, The Good Dinosaur and Lightyear. From the same director as The Good Dinosaur, this summer this studio releases Elemental, which from the trailers looks straight up like an Inside Out meets Zootopia wannabe. In some ways that brief assessment is accurate, this film borrows some elements, no pun intended, from both those films, the city design, the hot headed fire character Ember resembling Anger from Inside Out and the water Wade resembles Sadness in respective ways. That may be leading some to hold off on taking the family to the theatre and simply waiting for this one to roll to Disney+ next month. But make no mistake, surprisingly, this is a return to form of top tier Pixar films, not only will this be among the studios best movies, this will be among the best films of 2023. There’s fun, laughs and smiles for the whole family, touching moments and tears as well as the film navigates an assortment of topics like rascism, ethnic and cultural differences, what it’s like being a minority and it’s also a touching love story at it’s core. You could say that if you only go to the theatre to see the best of the best each year, going to see Elemental is, well, elemental.

SYNOPSIS - Pixar introduces us to this world of elements as we see a boat made of what appears to be cast iron come slowly sailing onscreen out of a thick fog. Onboard this vessel are two characters made of fire, a man and his pregnant wife, they sail ahead and out of the mist, ahead of them appears the city adjacent to Zootopia, Elemental City, where all the elements live in harmony. They walk off the boat ramp and look hesitantly at each other as they see the other people of the city, a group of trees coming down another ramp, a bunch of water people come spilling out of a boat nearby and a zeppelin balloon full of cloud puff people come filing out. After a tour of this city occupied by mostly water and tree folk, we see the fire couple rejected from renting several spaces from water and tree tenants before setting up shop in an out of the way, run down section of the neighborhood. We see in a time lapse sequence the fire couple has a fire child, a girl named Ember (Leah Lewis), whom they teach about the ways of their people as they set up a business and make a living for themselves with a store they call The Fireplace. As the hot headed Ember grows into a young hottie, we watch as she frequently loses her temper on customers in an explosion of flames. The mother character curiously is some kind of love guru, she has a room where couples come to see her, light some kind of sticks and from the smoke she discerns whether they’re in love or not.

One day Ember, while trying to keep her cool during a store sale, runs downstairs to keep from blowing up in front of the customers. After going down, she notices the pressure in the basement pipes building, suddenly leaks begin to spring up all over the room, filling it with water and after a minute, Wade (Mamoudou Athie), a water person who is a city inspector, pops up out of the water. As he looks around and speaks to Ember, he begins to nervously point out all the problems with the system that Ember’s father had built down there himself. Wade, aside from his propensity to spontaneously burst into tears, is diligent in his duty as an inspector and writes up the numerous code violations in the businesses basement and heads back to the main station, but not without being chased down by Ember in her hopes of preventing the stores closure. Unsurprisingly, the beginning of this fire and water relationship begins on a contentious note, but as Ember pleads her case, Wade decides to help her try and figure out the original source of the mysterious leak and save her store from being shut down. As the two begin to get to know each other, this love story touches on family expectations, racism, cultural differences, but at it’s heart is a touching and heartwarming story about every race having things that not only make them unique and different, but truly amazing.

To say that Elementals puts some stunning animation on display is pretty cliché at this point, after the dazzling colors of Super Mario Bros and the boundary pushing work of Spider-Verse, does the phrase stunning animation carry any weight? But the animation of Pixar’s latest work is truly exceptional, from the fluid element designs of the characters to the vivid cityscape, this film looks incredible. The screenplay is mostly well crafted but is a bit of a two edged sword at times, it can be terribly clever in moments, although it does hit some contrived, unnecessary and predictable drama and emotional beats along the way, especially into the third act. The direction of Peter Sohn is quite impressive in juggling the film’s many themes, (almost too many), especially after his last Pixar film, The Good Dinosaur is arguably among Pixar’s worst. I also quite enjoyed the film’s original score from composer Thomas Newman, its often light chimes and ethereal mixes with vocalizing like the Vuelie intro to Frozen worked well with the film’s bright and airy tone. On other musical notes, the original song for the film, Steal The Show, by Lauv, a San-Francisco electronic keyboard R&B artist, is excellent and I think it has some real potential to crack into the Oscars Best Original Song category. I wasn’t terribly blown away by the voice cast, which isn’t to say they weren’t good, I enjoyed the two main characters of Ember and Wade, but the only really memorable character was Wendi McLendon-Covey as Wade’s mother Gale, who was an absolute hoot. This film combines so many pieces of good and great filmmaking that it truly ends up being one unique and impressive collection of rare elements.

SUMMARY - Despite some of the perceived flaws that this film may have, it’s originally, humor and heart make this the   best non-sequel Pixar film since Inside Out. This film isn’t some blast of Earth, Wind & Fire you should wait on and catch in September on Disney+, this Elemental is one of those rare movies that audiences of all shapes and sizes can fall in love with. Catch it in the theatre while you can.