I did not have high expectations for Elemental. I was very slow to jump off the Pixar bandwagon, even finding myself enjoying some of their lesser movies. Lightyear put an end to that. After a lot of less-than-stellar movies, I was more or less ready to concede that the studio isn’t where it used to be. Sure, the animation was typically gorgeous, but many of them had plots that felt half-considered, and parent company Disney was making better CGI animated features for the most part. And something about Elemental reminded me too much of something like Cars or Onward where any initial enthusiasm I might have had didn’t last long, and the movie ended up looking more cute than anything else. Then again, I never liked Cars.
As it is, I liked Elemental a lot more than I thought I would.
At the movie’s opening, two fire elementals quickly renamed “Bernie” (Ronnie del Carmen) and “Cinder” (Shila Ommi) arrive in Element City where Air, Water, and Earth elementals already call home. However, they seem to be among the first in a wave of immigrants from the Fire Lands, and after some difficulties finding housing, they find a place and open up a Fire Elemental-specific grocery store while Cinder reads fortunes on the side. Soon, they have a daughter that they name Ember (Leah Lewis). Bernie has promised to pass the store down to his daughter one day, and she is bound and determined to prove herself even as her literally fiery temper keeps causing trouble.
In fact, her temper causes her to blow her stack in the basement and burst a pipe. Said pipe should be dry, but water comes out of it, including city inspector Wade (Mamoudou Athie). Wade is prone to crying small waterfalls of tears, and sadly, he reports he has to cite the store for multiple violations that could get the place closed down. To stop that, Ember has to do something she has never done before: venture out of her familiar neighborhood on her own to stop Wade. Wade, it turns out, is sympathetic to her story and even does what he can to save the store, all without telling Ember’s parents because, it turns out, they both (but Bernie especially) has prejudice against water elementals like Wade. But then, over the course of various adventures throughout the city, Ember and Wade manage to fall in love. This is unheard of for many reasons. Not only is romance between elemental types pretty much unheard of, but there’s some real danger to both Wade and Ember if they try to make any sort of physical contact. Can these two crazy kids work something out, especially in a city that seems to have been built without fire elementals in mind?
OK, so, I was surprised how much I liked this one. I wouldn’t say I loved it, but the more I reflect on it after seeing it, the more I generally appreciate what the movie was trying to do. I was expected a love story. I was not expecting a immigrant story or something about prejudice. There are multiple examples about how Element City just was not made with fire elementals in mind. Factor in as well that I was stunned by the animation in ways I wasn’t expecting. While the different elemental characters look like standard Pixar cartoon characters, everything else seems a lot more photorealistic, right down to the clothes the characters wear. Combine that with a lot of creative use for how the different elements do things like eat or use public transit, and the movie has a lot going for it. This movie was a visual delight if nothing else.
That said, it’s not perfect. Wade’s crying in the early scenes is more annoying than anything else, and there did seem to be a somewhat formulaic feel to the movie. But honestly, I just really liked Ember and Wade together. This is a solid, mid-tier Pixar movie, not in the upper echelons like the early Toy Storys or Finding Nemo, but it’s solid, likable, and something I enjoyed more and more the longer it went. I just did not see that coming.
Grade: B+
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