Elemental (2023)

 

Elemental (2023)

 

6/10

 

Starring the voices of

Leah Lewis

Mamoudou Athie

Ronnie del Carmen

Shila Ommi

 

Directed by Peter Sohn

 

It’s easy to see why this movie didn’t break the bank compared to other Pixar films. Watching it, I felt a huge disconnect between myself and the characters. The animation is the same top-notch quality you’d expect from Pixar, but the story is just so boring at the start. Twenty minutes in, with Ember struggling to control her temper and chasing after the city official, I was already yawning.

This is Pixar’s twenty-seventh animated film, set in a world inhabited by anthropomorphic elements of nature. The movie is a romantic comedy about two crossed elements—water and fire—falling in love. They meet in a convenience store owned by Mr. Lumen, a fire element who runs the store with his daughter, Ember, while his wife reads the future for lovers in their apartment upstairs. The family has one major issue: Ember struggles to keep her emotions in check. Early on, we see her flare up when people start getting on her nerves.

How did the two meet?

Well, Wade, a water-element city inspector, gets mistakenly sucked into their plumbing and discovers numerous infractions that could lead to the store being shut down.

The connection between the two characters—Wade, who can’t stop his tears from falling, and Ember, who struggles to control her fiery anger—starts when they team up to save the store. The Lumen family’s shop is getting flooded, and the source of the flood is unknown. Wade and Ember journey above the city in search of the source, hoping to stop it and keep the store open.

Then the movie takes a sharp turn into full-blown romance. We watch as Wade and Ember fall in love and try to make their relationship work while keeping it hidden from Papa and Mama Lumen.

This switch to romance is where I started wondering how this movie could be appealing enough to children for them to want to watch it again. There’s a lack of clarity about the audience. Is this movie meant for kids to enjoy the stunning animation, or for adults to see a love story about two characters who seemingly shouldn’t be attracted to each other?

I think the idea for this movie might have felt fresh when it was conceived, but times have changed. Studios need to cut costs or adapt to the current trends. With blockbuster movies being released almost every week, films like this won’t succeed unless there’s something truly catchy to draw in the right audience and make them want to watch it repeatedly. The days when Pixar could rely solely on its name to make a hit are gone.