Movie Review - Elemental

 

Well here it is. The film that has become Pixar's biggest flop and honestly, I think Disney are really not trying anymore with marketing their animated stuff. Oh, never mind that the company's bread and butter is animation. No things like the live action remakes, the Star Wars sequels, the lazily written Marvel films and even Indiana Jones 5 or anything that's unoriginal, takes priority, apparently. Still, despite that, I always look forward to seeing a Pixar film. I don't think I have ever seen a quote on quote "bad film" of theirs. In fact, I would go as far as to say that Cars 2 may not be as bad as people make it out to be, but it's far from being Pixar's best film and likewise with the underwhelming Good Dinosaur and Lightyear, the former of which has its director directing this very film. Recently, a lot of Pixar films have been loosely based on the life and experiences of the people working on them. For this film, the inspiration was on immigration, fitting in and just exploring the question of can water and fire mix. Elements, being used as the basis of a story, isn't entirely original. But very rare is the elements themselves being the characters rather than characters using the elements as seen in Avatar The Last Airbender, The Legend of Korra and Bionicle among others. Well it may not be doing well at the box office, but let's see if it was worth waiting for as it has just released here in the UK:

The setting is a place called Element City where water, air and earth, live in harmony. While the fire element is isolated and seperate due to their hazardous nature (among other things). Fire elements Bernie (voiced by Ronnie del Carmen) and his wife Cinder (voiced by Shila Ommi), immigrant to the city to start a new life and run a shop called the Fireplace. They have a daughter, which they call Ember (voiced by Leah Lewis) and hope that one day, she can run the store and they can retire. However, this proves to be a challenge when her fiery temper just can't control itself. One occasion when this happens, a water pipe breaks in the basement which causes a flood. The city inspector and a water element called Wade (voiced by Mamoudou Athie), finds himself there and after a funny chase scene, works with Ember to find the cause and stop it before Wade's boss and an air element called Gale (voiced by Wendi McLendon-Covey) is forced to close the shop down. Leading to Ember considering her life choices and Wade starting to wonder if different elements can mix after all.

The story is predictable. It has all the tropes of a love story and a story about a guy wanting his child to run a business when he/she retires. We've seen those stories many times before and this film doesn't really add anything new to that, apart from maybe a moral about embracing each other despite your differences, kind of thing. Despite that, it's well animated and once again, has us see Pixar push the limits of animation once more. It may not be as stylised as the Spider-Verse films, but each character looks very much like they are each, a different kind of animation in the elements they become. I don't recall seeing or hearing much of Pixar's usual Easter Eggs, but it's nice to finally watch a feature film with a short film attached again. It's been so long since that last happened, and it's nice to see it happen again. Plus, it's also great to see an original Pixar film back on the big screen and to a wider audience, too. Turning Red was also in cinemas too, but albeit limited. Good film overall that's definitely worth a watch and a good step in the right direction for Pixar, even though I feel a fifth Toy Story film just feels unnecessary. 8/10