Movie Review: ‘Elemental’

Director: Peter Sohn

Cast: Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie, Ronnie del Carmen, Shila Ommi, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Catherine O’Hara

Plot: In a city populated by modern, elemental humanoids, a young fire girl named Cinder has been working to take over her father’s shop. A chance encounter with Wade, a water elemental, challenges Cinder’s world view and forces her to make some difficult decisions.

Review: It wasn’t that long ago that a new Pixar movie was a major cinematic event. That’s a much more difficult feat for the animation fore-runners these days, as they’re no longer the hot new thing and they’re contending with a crowded marketplace – one that is starting to push past the industry leader. Unfortunately Elemental isn’t going to turn things back around for Pixar because, despite being a decent family flick with some complex conflicts, it’s got little to help it stand out.

Being a fan of animation in general, we will start with noting the incredible visuals that come with the elements shifting around and interacting with the environment. The functionality of the city fills the screen with little details and gags. As a showcase of Pixar’s ability to render the elemental people, it’s phenomenal. The flicking flames, sloshing water and crumbling dirt that make up the people of this world never gets boring to watch. If this movie had appeared ten or more years earlier than this would a strong selling point on its own.

As impressive an artistic and technological showcase this is, it needs something worthwhile to frame it around. The sad truth is that nothing in the story stood out from recent Pixar and Disney CGI animated movies in terms of theme and tone. This isn’t the fault of the film-makers, as it feels very personal and heartfelt, but because it has been released at a time where some of these ideas feel like they’ve been done a couple of times over now. Even the city feels a great deal like Zootopolis from Zootopia, with themes of cultural segregation and the multigenerational refugee experience feeling familiar in this style of film. It doesn’t handle these ideas badly, but it doesn’t feel like Elemental is adding much to the conversation.

What could be better handled are some of the contrivances needed to keep the story moving. The introduction of Wade (Athie) through the burst pipes feels forced, and poorly implemented considering the story behind this moment (that we don’t see) becomes a ticking clock narrative device. It’s a weird and jumbled way to introduced our secondary main character and a key plot element. The way this problem with city infrastructure gets put on hold also feels like an after-thought, with the sand melting discovery being introduced the scene before they used it as a solution, only for it to arbitrarily fail later in the third act. For a movie with such great water animation, it lacks a certain flow.

Although we can appreciate the amount of work that went into this movie, especially the animation, it’s not memorable.

Rating: SIX out of TEN