Film review: ‘Elemental’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’
Disney/ Pixar’s Elemental is a quirky, visually inventive, animated romance that serves more as a parable of multiculturalism, race relations and acceptance than as a traditional adventure comedy.
The film takes the ancient philosophical notion of the world being composed of four essential elements: earth, air, fire and water and turns them into four populations of people who the inhabit the New York-like Element City. Here, Fire people Bernie (Ronnie del Carmen), wife Cinder (Shila Omni) and teen daughter ember (Leah Lewis) run a shop in the very Bronx-like borough of Firetown. As Bernie nears retirement, it’s expected Ember will take over the shop, a responsibility she seems keen to embrace. Her seemingly ordered life is thrown into chaos, though, when she meets and slowly falls for the very anxious and emotional water guy, Wade (Mamoudou Athie). Their friendship and tentative romance appears doomed, though, as Bernie seriously dislikes water people and any physical contact might extinguish Ember or vaporise Wade. A looming disaster, however, may force Ember and Wade to bring all their fiery and watery qualities together to save Ember’s community.
Exploring issues such as race relations in an animated film and depicting different races and cultures as distinct elemental creatures could have gone wrong. Thankfully, director and co-writer Peter Sohn deftly navigates this tricky material and creates a very sweet film about accepting others and ourselves. He plays with the idea that the different people of Element City have properties that seem hazardous or unusual to others but shows they can live together and need each other. The film also touches on the importance of family and tradition and delivers at least one scene that will have even the most stone-faced of movie critics sniffling.
Typically of Disney/ Pixar animated films, Elemental looks stunning with some vivid, intricately designed city scapes and a few astonishingly photo-realistic scenes. The film also builds some clever gags around the characters’ differing abilities and how these play out in their daily lives.
Importantly, the characters are endearing but also flawed. Ember has passion and determination that will delight youngsters but also a temper that she needs to learn to control while Wade is a very likeable guy but literally goes to water at the slightest thing.
This is a middling film within the Disney Pixar cannon and is unlikely to gain the iconic status of a Toy Story but it tells in important story in an affecting way that’s savvy enough to appeal to all ages.
Nick’s rating: ***1/2
Genre: Drama/ Action/ Adventure/ Animation.
Classification: PG.
Director(s): Peter Sohn.
Release date: 15th June 2023.
Running time: 109 mins.
Reviewer: Nick Gardener can be heard on “Built For Speed” every Friday night from 8-10pm on 88.3 Southern FM.