(PG) ★★★
Director: Peter Sohn.
Cast: (voices of) Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie, Ronnie del Carmen, Shila Ommi, Mason Wertheimer, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Catherine O'Hara.
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| "What makes you think we overwatered and then set fire to the plants?" |
Water falls in love with fire. That's the elevator pitch here. Oh, and it's a reflection on the immigrant experience. And it's made by Pixar. How could it miss?
Pixar films are great at being several things at once. Inside Out is about anthropomorphic personifications of feelings go on a twisted journey through the human mind, but it's also about becoming a teenager and leaving childhood behind, plus the power and necessity of all our emotions. The Incredibles is a superhero movie, but it's also about being true to yourself, and what makes everyone special. Finding Nemo & Dory are great adventures, but are also about disability. This combination of deep themes and all-ages entertainment is the secret to Pixar's success.
Elemental is great at juggling its surface love story and its deeper immigrant themes, but, oddly, it only does a passable job at getting all the, ahem, elements to work together across the whole of its runtime. As a result, Elemental is good, not great. Maybe that says more about the "great expectations" that come with each new Pixar film, and maybe I'm wrong - I was wrong about Ratatouille after my first viewing. But Elemental has all the necessary pieces, yet it can't get the puzzle to fit together like you'd hope.
The romantic odd couple here are Ember, the fiery daughter of immigrants, who is destined to take over the family business, and Wade, the wet son of privileged upper class water elements, who works as a council inspector. Wade literally spills into Ember's life and puts Ember's family business at risk of closure, but the pair soon have to work together to find the source of a major water leak that threatens to cause major damage and loss of life in Fire Town.
Firstly: don't think too hard about the physics of Elemental, otherwise it will start doing your head in. Why is water different in its water form to its person form when a Water Person can disappear into the water water? And how come the heat of a fire person... anyway, I need to stop thinking about this, or I'll get a headache.
But, more importantly, its the story that seems to have pieces missing from the equation. A moment where a character professes their desire to see a particular flower as a child seemingly comes out of nowhere, leading to a beautiful but ultimately distracting divergence. And given we don't see a single other example of a Fire Person romantically or even platonically involved with a Water Person, it feels like their relationship doesn't attract as much interest/attention as it could or should. Similarly, a subplot about a leak threatening Fire Town feels underdeveloped - was there a villain removed from the story? And why aren't more people concerned about this leak given it could literally kill thousands of people?
The film really hits its stride when Wade and Ember are forced to work together and their romance can blossom, but getting there is a bit of a struggle. What's consistently good is the world creation (physics questions aside) - the otherness of the Fire People is captured wonderfully, and their experience will no doubt speak volumes to people from migrant backgrounds - but dotted in between are story elements that don't flow as beautifully as a Water Person on a slide.
The characters are great, and the visuals are impressive, even if the cartoonish nature of the Fire and Water People is sometimes jarring against the real-looking objects they interact with. Still, it's a wonderful feat of animation to make everything as stunning as it is. Fire and water are two notoriously difficult elements to animate, but Pixar takes such challenges in its stride these days.
Lewis and Athie give vibrant performances, with Athie somehow making Wade's predilection for bursting into tears believable. There's a strong support cast as usual, and the match of voice-to-character is an under-rated part of Pixar's magic.
Enjoyable and beautiful, Elemental manages to nail its themes and its love story, but doesn't flow or sizzle quite like its fire-water combo suggests it should.
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