Director: Peter Sohn
Starring: Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie, Ronnie Del Carmen
Year: 2023
Calling Elemental a simple combination of Zootopia and Inside Out may be an oversimplification, sure, but it also isn’t wrong. Pixar’s newest addition is just another animated morality tale, one we’ve seen before and will likely see again, without much in the way of innovation or fresh ideas. Elemental is elementary, and it borrows too heavily from those that have come before, giving us just another Disney yawn and starting us thinking that maybe that’s all we’ll ever get again.
When Fire comes to the big city, Water and Earth and Air will find their horizons broadened but their comfort threatened, which is how change always presents itself, with fear but with growth. The first Fire immigrants start a community, attracting more from the old country, until a vibrant section of town blossoms where once there wasn’t room for anything so colorful. Ember and her parents run a little shop, it’s her dad’s dream to hand it down to her, but first she must learn to control her temper, especially when things start going wrong at the store, and a Water dude named Wade seems to be at the heart of it. Differences will be put aside, lessons will be learned, and varying ingredients will mix, eventually turning into something beautiful that couldn’t have existed without a little spark.
That this is a tale of immigrants was surprising, and slightly different from Zootopia, as is the romance of the story, when others focus on friendship, but otherwise Elemental is already stale before it even gets going. The city, the conflict, the characters; they all feel cheap and overused, like Pixar reached into the bag and pulled out some old pieces that they had neglected to throw away cause they might be useful someday. That could have been forgiven, had the story been exciting in other areas, but it was dead wherever you looked, from the parent/child dynamic to the thin water-bursting climax, weak spots all around that needed to be so much stronger to save the day. The film was one note throughout, one song that flowed nicely and looked cool but never went up or down, it just existed. It’s a movie that won’t be remembered, not like Inside Out, and memorable is what we’ve come to expect from Disney/Pixar; maybe we need to adjust our expectations, because the magic might be over.
My rating: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆