REVIEW: Elemental (2023)

Movie Reviews

I haven’t been excited for Pixar’s Elemental. I’m a lifelong Pixar fan, and for years, their releases were an anticipated highlight of every year. I always saw whatever Pixar was putting out for my birthday, as they tended to come out in June. However, I knew immediately that Elemental wasn’t how I wanted to celebrate. Far from the heart of movies like Inside Out and Coco and seemingly devoid of the biting wit of Toy Story (only the first two) or The Incredibles (only the first one), Elemental looked like watered-down Zootopia to me. Was I being too harsh? Have I just been raining on a good movie’s parade? Grab a shovel, and let’s dig in. 

Elemental follows Ember (Leah Lewis), the daughter of Firish immigrants Bernie (Ronnie Del Carmen) and Cinder (Shila Omni), who run a shop just outside of Element City. This fiery family follows two simple rules: keep the blue flame in their hearth lit, and the elements don’t mix. However, Ember’s life is complicated when she meets Wade (Mamoudou Athie) and not only falls in love with him but realizes taking over the shop isn’t her path in life. Will true love and Ember’s fiery passion for a possible new career win out? Will her traditional parents turn their backs on her rebellion? Is Element City just Zootopia for the periodic table? 

Before I dive too deep into Elemental, I want to discuss Carl’s Date, the short film that precedes the feature. A spin-off/sequel/whatever to 2009’s Up, Carl’s Date fittingly finds the geriatric retiree preparing for a date. Carl’s (Ed Asner) wife, Ellie, was the only girl he ever went out with, and he spent the entire movie struggling to accept her passing. As such, he’s nervous about the venture and feels like he’s betraying her memory. Many widows and widowers experience similar guilt when faced with the question of moving on. Bob Peterson directs the short and reprises his role as Dug, who offers his owner support and encouragement throughout his preparations. Edward Asner recorded his lines for Carl in 2021, before his unfortunate passing. The short is delightful and captures some of the original movie’s magic despite having a different director and only a third of its already tiny cast. The Pixar short is an essential facet of seeing their films in theaters, and I’m delighted to see such a good one after Lightyear skipped out on the studio’s tradition. After all, Pixar specialized in the short film for 11 years, from The Adventures of Andre and Wally B. in 1984 to Toy Story in 1995. Carl’s Date is fun, funny, sweet, and almost made me cry. 

Most of the discourse I’ve seen around Elemental either concerns its marvelous visuals or director Peter Sohn’s own immigrant story serving as the story’s inspiration. The animation is mind-blowing, definitely up to Pixar standards, and worthy of the big screen. The original score by Thomas Newman (Finding Nemo, Wall-E, Skyfall) is pretty and very interesting. It has a very unique sound that sets it apart from anything Pixar has done. I’ll come back to the immigration inspiration, but I will say that the main reason people are focusing on the animation is it’s the only real reason to see Elemental in theaters. It’s unquestionably the movie’s best aspect, and it feels like this is where most of the effort went in production. I absolutely adore animation; I love watching it, I think about it all the time, and it’s what I wanted to do for years. But visuals can’t carry a film for me, no matter the medium or how well executed. I prize the story and, most especially, the characters and their relationships above every other aspect of filmmaking. I’ll gladly watch an ugly movie with strong writing, but I can’t say the reverse. This is actually one of the reasons Pixar was my favorite film studio and essentially got me interested in movies; for the first two decades of its existence, Pixar paired state-of-the-art animation with compelling concepts and well-rounded characters. Kids liked Woody and Buzz because they were cool toys, but it’s their struggles and anxieties that created adult and lifelong fans. 

So, what about the characters and relationships in Elemental? What are Ember’s struggles? As the daughter of hard-working immigrants, she feels pressured to marry within her own kind and run her father’s shop once he retires. That’s well and good on paper, but we don’t get to know her well enough as an individual. This storyline is also part of a growing and escalating trend in Disney and Pixar films. I’ll come back to that. As for Wade, he doesn’t really have problems to overcome. He cries a lot, and he really, really wants to hook up with Ember. He’s mostly well-adjusted and happy, with his mom imposing no such expectations on his shoulders. I don’t mean to make Ember’s parents sound mean; they’re much more reasonable than some other parents in stories like this. Ultimately, Wade is mainly used for comic relief, and the jokes aren’t funny. Ember isn’t that well-defined, and she walks a familiar path that isn’t changed up much. I don’t expect to be surprised by movies, and I respect the use of archetypes and tropes. Things usually become clichés because, at the end of the day, they work. But when doing something that has been done before, you must do it exceptionally well and put your own spin on it. No dice for Elemental there. I’m afraid the side characters don’t fare much better, and I suspect Elemental’s biggest crime will be forgettableness. 

I can’t fault Sohn for the immigrant storyline. They say, “Write what you know,” and generally, I like him a lot. He has voiced characters like Emile in Ratatouille, Squishy in Monsters University, and SOX in Lightyear. He also directed The Good Dinosaur and voiced Miles’ roommate in Across the Spider-Verse. Honestly, though, most of my fondness for him is as an animator, which I think is where his real talent lies. He worked on some of the best scenes in Finding Nemo and especially The Incredibles, including my favorite part in the latter. When Pixar had a brain trust in place and little oversight from Disney, the output was better because they knew what stories to tell and who was suited to what jobs. A great writer/director like Brad Bird can juggle multiple complex themes and character arcs and create a masterpiece. But Elemental reminds me of Strange World because it’s bogged down by its themes, which it never manages to tie together or resolve satisfyingly. This leads me to the trend I mentioned: the theme of intergenerational trauma. Disney’s animation studios seem OBSESSED with this concept for some reason. It was great in Encanto. I want to stress both “great” and “was” here. That movie really got into the nitty gritty of why this family is dysfunctional and how we can unknowingly hurt the ones we love because we’re still hurting too. But this notion has been revisited in Turning Red, Strange World, and now Elemental, and it gets less interesting and subtle each time. We get it! I really hope Wish isn’t about this because I’m burnt out with seeing this topic in animated family movies; I need a break. I agree wholeheartedly with the idea, and clearly, this generation of animation writers and directors really went through it. But again, if you’re going where other films have been before, you must do something new or different with your take. They didn’t pull it off with these ideas or with the metropolitan city, which is too much like Zootopia without the humor or interesting denizens to match. 

Elemental is a visual wonder, and some of the worldbuilding is very clever. But that’s as far as the thought process seems to have gone; the script is very color-by-numbers for this type of film, and the characters are nothing special. Usually, a movie like this from Pixar would disappoint me. But I haven’t been truly wowed by their output since Coco, although I at least enjoyed Soul and Lightyear. Furthermore, when movies like Across the Spider-Verse are coming out and doing gangbusters at the box office, who has time to worry about Elemental? I’m not saying it’s horrible, but I wouldn’t blame you for waiting for Disney+, especially if you have a large family to pay for.