Review: “Elemental”

Elemental is that classic tale of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy makes grand heroic gesture to win girl back. I’d say that with their 27^th feature film, Pixar Animation Studios put their own spin on the old romance trope, but they sort of don’t—except that the boy, in this case, is a being made out of water, and the girl is made of fire. On a surface level, all of the elements (pardon the pun) are there: the elaborate world-building, a heart-felt story driven by a message of inclusivity, and spectacular effects and character animation. But it’s lacking that special spark at its center necessary to set it apart. Instead, its overarching metaphor and world-building collapses in on itself, the motivations of its characters too underdeveloped to resonate emotionally or, at the very least, appear thoughtfully constructed.

Elemental is set in Element City, a stand in for New York City in which beings made of several other elements—water, earth, air—thrive. But their environment isn’t exactly friendly to fire people, so when Bernie and his pregnant wife Cinder Lumen (Ronnie del Carmen and Shila Ommi) immigrate there from their homeland in search of a better life, they struggle to find a place to call home, facing xenophobia from residents who feel threatened by their flame. They end up settling in a dilapidated building across the bridge from the city, Bernie turning it into a shop called the Fireplace selling authentic wares from Fire Land, and a community of fire people builds around them over the years. Now a young woman, Bernie and Cinder’s daughter Ember (Leah Lewis) prepares to take over the Fireplace so her father can retire, but she struggles to contain her temper when it comes to dealing with unruly customers. One day, one of her outbursts breaks a water pipe in the basement, prompting city inspector and water element Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie) to wash into the building, and into Ember’s life.

Much of the main conflict of Elemental involves Wade trying to help Ember find a fix the leak that caused water to rush into Fire Town so the violations he located in the Fireplace will be forgiven and the shop won’t have to be shut down. But in the process, the pair fall in love (despite being opposite elements who supposedly can’t even touch, and despite the fact that fire elements hold a lot of resentment toward water elements) and Ember realizes that maybe her dream isn’t running the Fireplace after all. Ember and the so-emotional-literally-everything-makes-him-sob Wade are cute (this is the first time since their 2008 masterwork WALL-E that Pixar has really leaned into an overtly romantic story), but it all feels rather half-baked. The leap from acquaintances to mutual attraction between the pair is hurried through, while Ember’s true talent and aspiration—making art out of glass—sort of comes out of nowhere. Director Peter Sohn (who also helmed the studio’s The Good Dinosaur) also shares a story credit on the film, and reportedly based it on his own experiences as the child of Korean immigrants growing up in the Bronx. But despite clearly good intentions, there’s something rather uneasy about how the fire elements—with their thick accents, made-up language, and the aesthetic of their architecture—are obviously coded as Middle Eastern in a way that feels unintentionally stereotypical. And while the world-building in almost every Pixar film set in some fantasy environment, from Coco to Inside Out to Monsters, Inc. to even a more middling project like Onward has been clever and thoughtful, Elemental is lacking something. Rather than the environment and the way the characters interact within it provoking inspired awes or chuckles, it leaves the viewer with more questions than they likely should have about the logic of this world (water douses fire, but when Wade and Ember touch it’s fine?).

While Elemental is a perfectly fine and watchable piece of entertainment (and the effects animation, particularly in depicting transparency of water and the perpetually-shimmering fire, is truly impressive, and the voice cast’s enthusiasm rings through in their performances) the frustration lies in that you can see the potential just glimmering in the distance. Had the filmmakers perhaps been more ambitious with their storytelling, they might have propelled Elemental toward the top of the studio’s greatest works. But it adheres too closely to its influences—the 1967 comedy/drama Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, in which a white woman brings her Black fiancé home to meet her conservative parents, chief among them—to feel like it is doing much more than hitting the requisite beats and feeding us the same old tropes, just with a shiny new look.

Elemental is now playing in theaters. Runtime: 109 minutes. Rated PG.