I think Pixar is in a weird place right now. In a lot of ways, the pandemic has set them back, and I don’t know if Disney has done right by them lately. The rest of the animation world has not only caught up, including Disney Feature animation, but I’d also say Illumination, and Sony Feature Animation has surpassed Disney and Pixar at the animated feature film game. After last year’s Lightyear flopping, Pixar is back with Elemental. It’s a romantic comedy about two people who live very different lives meeting each other and falling in love even as society tells them they shouldn’t be together. See, we have a young woman named Ember, the daughter of immigrants who runs a store in part of the city that neighborhood that just immigrants from the same country. She wants to live up to her father Bernie’s dream of taking over the store, while her mom wants her to find love. One day she meets Wade, a city inspector who ends up writing up her dad’s store for citations on the day she runs the store by herself. She chases him to stop him from putting in those to stop anything from happening to the store. After talking with Wade, he decides to help her save her dad’s store, but these two young people spending all that time together getting to know each other leads to some other feelings.
Now what I just wrote is like a rom-com you might’ve watched twenty years ago. And pretty much it is. It reminded me of Bride and Prejudice or any other opposites attract movie. What makes this one different is that it’s about a woman made of fire falling in love with a man made of water, and they live in a city full of beings made up of these two elements along with cloud air, people, and plant/dirt people. I think with this fantastical setting and characters having this pretty standard movie-style story is what throwing people off. For me, it’s this mix that, while well done it is a bit lacking. The story, while intimate, is quite small and doesn’t find a new nut to crack in this type of tale. The voice acting in this film is very good and does help to get you into the story, at least for me. Leah Lewis plays Ember, and Mamoudou Athie plays Wade, and both have the right amount of vocal chemistry together. You really feel these characters’ feelings and moods through their performances along with the animator’s animation. All the voice actors did fantastic jobs in this, but again the whole story does leave it a bit wanting after such heights of Coco or every single Toy Story.
Yet the animation – the character designs to the world design and productions design of the things in Element City are all a joy to look at. It has moments where the world enters a state of photorealism that has these weird characters in it, but it also never looks out of place one bit. There are some really stunning visuals and shots in this film that took me aback that I don’t think will be appreciated by many, but I hope I’m very wrong. I feel Elemental is a very good film that will be underappreciated by the of this year.
Score: B
