Ele­men­tal

It’s almost 20 years since Dis­ney acquired Pixar from Steve Jobs – in which time the com­pa­ny have pro­duced some of their best-loved films, includ­ing Rata­touille, Up, and Inside Out. They’ve col­lect­ed nine Best Ani­mat­ed Fea­ture Oscars and count some of the biggest stars in the world among their sta­ble of voice actors, but Peter Sohn – who pre­vi­ous­ly direct­ed The Good Dinosaur – takes things in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion with Ele­men­tal, a rom-com set in a uni­verse where anthro­po­mor­phic ele­ments (earth, wind, fire and water) occu­py sprawl­ing cityscapes and go about their dai­ly grind.

Ember Lumen (Leah Lewis) is the daugh­ter of two fire ele­men­tals, who moved to Ele­ment City from their native land in search of a bet­ter life. Faced with xeno­pho­bia they set up shop in Fire Town, a dilap­i­dat­ed part of the city, which would even­tu­al­ly become a bustling cul­tur­al hub. Ember is expect­ed to inher­it her father’s gro­cery shop – The Fire Place – but her father has reser­va­tions about her tem­pera­ment (she’s hot-head­ed, nat­u­ral­ly). After los­ing her tem­per while serv­ing a cus­tomer, Ember runs into Wade Rip­ple (Mamoudou Athie) a good-natured water ele­men­tal and local city inspec­tor, who declares The Fire Place not up to code. Faced with the prospect of her par­ents’ shop being shut down, Ember begs him to recon­sid­er – and soon it’s off to the races in a clas­sic sto­ry of oppo­sites attract.

While Pixar films have includ­ed romance before, there has nev­er been an explic­it rom-com made by the stu­dio, and Sohn’s ambi­tion is admirable here, as he attempts to bring new ideas to Pixar amid the glut of sequels and pre­quels the stu­dio has favoured late­ly. Lewis and Athie have a pleas­ant chem­istry togeth­er, prov­ing that the stu­dio doesn’t need huge celebri­ties to cre­ate like­able, engag­ing char­ac­ters. It’s clear that a lot of thought has gone into the design of Ele­ment City and how the inhab­i­tants live with­in it (Sohn has been devel­op­ing the idea for Ele­men­tal for almost a decade) but despite these efforts, there’s still some­thing that feels slight­ly odd and arti­fi­cial about the ani­ma­tion. Pixar is known for its gor­geous, evoca­tive aes­thet­ics, and there’s some­thing miss­ing from Elemental.

Also miss­ing is more insight into the Rip­ple fam­i­ly, who are arguably the more charm­ing and expres­sive group com­pared to the Lumens. Cather­ine O’Hara puts in a fine show­ing as Wade’s ditzy moth­er Brook, who imme­di­ate­ly takes a shine to Ember and encour­ages her to pur­sue her love of glass­blow­ing. Per­haps the prob­lem is that Ele­men­tal comes so soon after Turn­ing Red, which sim­i­lar­ly addressed the Asian-Amer­i­can dias­po­ra through the lens of a par­ent-child rela­tion­ship, but with more of a focused tone. Ele­men­tal is a more scat­tered affair, and a large sub­plot that revolves around city plan­ning and the cre­ation of a dam in Fire Town will like­ly be of lit­tle inter­est to the film’s young tar­get audience.

There are brief glim­mers of that old Pixar mag­ic, and the char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of Wade as an emo­tion­al­ly open and vul­ner­a­ble male pro­tag­o­nist feels sur­pris­ing­ly nov­el in a fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed Dis­ney film. But its cliché Romeo and Juli­et sto­ry­line feels old hat, and it’s a shame that even such a fan­tas­ti­cal world seems bound to be all but iden­ti­cal to the one we live in. Sure­ly a real­i­ty where the ele­ments are in charge should be more inven­tive, not lim­it­ed by the trap­pings of cap­i­tal­ism and gen­der norms? Per­haps there’s a reluc­tance to go too far with these con­cepts and risk alien­at­ing audi­ences, but when ani­ma­tion stu­dios around the world have been run­ning laps around Pixar for a good while now, it feels like the Amer­i­can titan needs to step up their game and dream a lit­tle bigger.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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