Time: 101 Minutes
Age Rating: PG – Some scenes may scare very young children
Voice Cast:
Leah Lewis as Ember Lumen
Mamoudou Athie as Wade Ripple
Ronnie del Carmen as Bernie Lumen
Shila Ommi as Cinder Lumen
Wendi McLendon-Covey as Gale Cumulus
Catherine O’Hara as Brook Ripple
Director: Peter Sohn

I definitely heard about Elemental, the Pixar animated movie focussing on elements as its characters. It didn’t look the best to me, and I didn’t exactly rush into the movie after hearing the very mild reactions. What got me to watch the movie was the fact that it was nominated for Best Animated film at the Oscars. Having seen the movie, I understand some of the reactions, and can only conclude that it was only nominated because The Academy were obligated to nominate at least one animated movie from Disney, and the only other option was Wish.

The writing isn’t exactly the best, the characters are pretty undercooked (even the two leads), and the humour almost always misses. The central concept might’ve seemed interesting 10 years ago, with it focussing on characters being of different elements (fire, water, etc), now it feels a little uninspired for Pixar. The actual execution isn’t that good either. I think the main problem is that it doesn’t really do much with its multi-elemental city setting. Unlike say Zootopia which lingers in its city, Elemental rushes through it if anything. Some of the world building is inventive, most of it is rather lazy though. Premise and setting aside, I just wasn’t that interested in the story. The themes about immigrant and class conflict are pretty familiar already, but they aren’t particularly deep in its execution here. This is largely seen in a father and daughter storyline which wasn’t particularly great and didn’t feel that genuine. It really didn’t help that other aspects are more in the forefront, especially the romance. Even the romance which the movie is more interested in is rather half baked, but thankfully there is some reasonably good chemistry between the two lead characters, helped by the great voice acting between Leah Lewis and Mamoudou Athie. Beyond that though, I wasn’t particularly invested in what was happening with them.

The best part of the movie is the animation itself. That said, I wouldn’t say it’s among Pixar’s best animation by any means. Some of their more recent previous movies like Luca and Inside Out look considerably better. Elemental does look nice and does have the occasional creative visual moment, but it’s nothing impressive. That said, it is helped by a really solid Thomas Newman score.

Elemental is average and passable, but benefits from its good voice acting and animation. While I wouldn’t call it outright bad, it’s definitely among Pixar’s weakest movies.