Pixar’s ‘ELEMENTAL’ a Derivative Love Story That’s Stuck in the Kiddie Pool

Until its acquisition by Disney in May of 2006, Pixar’s primary mandate was originality. The lifeblood of the Emeryville-based animation studio, every new picture was a tapestry of bold ideas, original characters, rich emotional complexity, and boundary-pushing digital animation. After being swallowed up by the House of Mouse, the studio’s focus shifted towards franchising, leading to a rise in Pixar sequels and a watering down of their “original” features. The conflagration of originality that once defined there every feature seemed to gradually wane into but a dim glow.

Not to discount the successful collaborations between the two companies. Indeed, their partnership has birthed numerous critically acclaimed and commercially successful ventures. Inside Out (2015) and Soul (2020), for instance, stand as two of the studio’s best creations and both earned top spots on this critic’s best-of-year lists during their respective releases. But for every Soul and Inside Out, there lurks a mediocre sequel (Finding Dory, Monsters University, Lightyear) or an unremarkable original venture (Luca, Onward, Brave). The studio also delivered a handful of outright duds (The Good Dinosaur, Turning Red). This brings us to Elemental, ostensibly another original outing, but one that woefully lacks in originality.

Elemental, directed by Peter Sohn (The Good Dinosaur) introduces us to a world of elemental beings. Creatures made of Water, Air, and Earth are residents of Element City, a fairly obvious cipher for NYC, but when Bernie (Ronnie del Carmen) and Cinder (Shila Ommi), a pair of fire elements from a far away Asian-coded land, first arrive in the towering metropolis, they are met with legal hostilities and unwelcoming locals. A thinly-veiled metaphor for the immigrant experience and the prejudice they endure, Elemental creates a world where fire, water, earth, and air intersect but not quite interact, using its aesthetic world-building to underscore the inequities that inform the film’s characters and their interactions.

The design of Elemental City stresses the underlying idea of foundational prejudice: the infrastructure of the city itself is designed to be water friendly with high-speed trams that rain unwelcome H20 down upon the less-desirable Fire neighborhood. In the more affluent (and consequently wet) parts of the city, signage can be found stating “No Fire Welcome,” further emphasizing the idea that fire and water simply don’t mix.

Enter Ember (Leah Lewis), Bernie and Cinder’s daughter, a capable but hot-tempered ingenue. Ember finds herself caught between two worlds – embracing the dream of her father to eventually take over the family shop, The Fireplace, or following her heart to pursue something more uniquely her. When Ember meets Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie), an emotional water element, she realizes that her destiny may be leading her into the most unexpected places within the city and her heart. At first the conflicting elements butt heads, Wade writing up The Fireplace for numerous code violations, but soon find kindred spirits in one another.

So begins their teenage immigrant love story. The screenplay from John Joberg, Kat Likkel, and Brenda Hsueh plays like a watered-down Romeo and Juliet, though their budding romance may prove too broad and derivative for the adults in the audience and too lovey-dovey for the kiddos. The remaining appeal is questionable and I’m not entirely sure who Elemental is supposed to be for. Though it’s largely inoffensive and relatively shallow in its narrative aspirations, it all feels much too slight to live up to Pixar’s once high watermark, the firebrand increasingly but a faint flicker.

The father-daughter material proves the most emotionally rich, as it deals with the expectations that first-generation parents foist upon their children to both follow their own path while remaining deferential to traditions (like only loving within your element). The interactions between Ember and Bernie come the closest to grab-the-tissue territory that Elemental has to offer but despite the fact that Wade is quick to a good, hard cry, this most recent Pixar offering will likely leave you dry-eyed and a bit bored.

CONCLUSION: Lesser Pixar through and through, ‘Elemental’ is Pixar’s first flirtation with a purely romance-driven film, but its basic, formulaic plotting won’t win over adults and its focus on mushy first-love may fail to capture the imagination of the wee ones.