Elemental Movie Review
Nathan Swank
June 14th, 2023
“ELEMENTAL is too lovey dovey.” This quote is from my 9 year-old daughter. My 6 year-old son was a bit more forgiving, but still concurred. Both of their squirmy and restless body language during our screening confirmed, ELEMENTAL, while perfectly fine in many ways, is probably not a rewatch kind of movie.
Pixar has been a proven brand for sometime now. There is not a single movie that I think is outright bad. Furthermore, even the company’s lesser films are usually better than most other films in any given year. ELEMENTAL still maintains that streak of being good. But “good” is no longer good enough when it comes to Pixar. Their bar is set too high and that’s a good thing.
Now before I begin getting hate mail, I liked ELEMENTAL. It is visually stunning and worth seeing for the eye-popping colors and animation alone. I appreciate the themes of embracing people’s differences, choosing love over hate, and working together through kindness. Unfortunately, that is all I can recommend as the story is fairly unoriginal, predictable, and too “lovey dovey” for children to fully embrace.
With similar beats and tones of Disney’s ZOOTOPIA, ELEMENTAL follows a world with different elemental beings – wood, wind, water, and fire. Wood and wind take a supporting role and the focus is on a fire girl named Ember Lumen (voiced by Leah Lewis) and a water guy named Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie). Ember is preparing to take over her father’s shop and comes from a history of fire and water not only being incompatible but outright loathing one another. Wade is a very kind and emotional safety inspector who finds all sorts of violations in the Lumen shop. Against family upbringing and social norms Lumen and Ember slowly begin to form a loving relationship as they try to also work together to save Ember’s family store.
The way the characters manipulate and reform visually with detailed color and transparency as fire and water is quite breathtaking. I liken the situation to AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER in that I truly am blown away by the visuals but would get pulled out of the film by some of the poor storytelling. It’s a bit cheesy and this is coming from someone who cries all the time at Pixar films and their lovely storytelling. That’s not to say that ELEMENTAL still didn’t manage to achieve some of those heart string pulling moments. It just didn’t do them as well nor earn some of the emotional beats.
WALL-E (another bit of love-story) and INSIDE OUT are my favorite Pixar films that my children like too. I know it’s not completely fair to compare it to those films, but they similarly have a bit of grown up appeal. Unfortunately, ELEMENTAL didn’t quite capture my kids, nor my wife and me, even close to the same way. Visually stunning with some genuine laugh-out-loud moments and creative world building scenes, Elemental is worth seeing. Hopefully the positive, albeit familiar, message will connect with audiences. But it feels a bit watered down in the story-telling. And I would definitely keep my daughter’s quote at the top of the review in mind.
CARL’S DATE – This adorable Pixar short film is shown before ELEMENTAL, following Carl from UP as he prepares for a first date. It’s a very tender and funny short where old man Carl enlists the help of his loyal dog, DUG, as they make a series of poor choices working out the nerves of going on a first date.
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