Elemental

 

Score:  A

Directed by Peter Sohn

Starring Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie, Ronnie del Carmen, Catherine O'Hara

Running time: 109 minutes

Rated PG

Long Story Short:  Pixar is back in theaters at long last* with Elemental, and it feels just like the good old days.  The premise is among Pixar's cleverest and most effective, using a city of element-people to bring to life both a heart-bursting rom-com as well as a poignant immigrant story.  The animation is as astounding as ever and the humor and emotions will send you soaring just like you remember.  Highly recommended for, like all Pixar films, any audience, from young families to cinephiles.

(*last year's Lightyear was technically Pixar's return to theaters, but I didn't see it and it didn't really seem like a true Pixar film, you know?)

Element City is a special place, one that, over the years, has adopted - but not yet fully integrated -  a colorful set of people in the form of elements: Fire, Water, Air, and Earth.  Ember (Lewis) lives with her parents in the Fire section of the city where they run the neighborhood bodega.  Ember is set to inherit the shop one day, but, appropriate to her element, must first overcome a quick and powerful temper.  Another obstacle to her taking over the Fireplace soon arrives when a dreaded water leak develops in the basement.  There is only so much that Ember can do by herself, so she is forced to trust in the other elements in the city around her for help.  It's a test of compatibility in a city long kept separated out of fear and ignorance.

Elemental is a great animated film with all of Pixar's typically great visual design, cleverness, and emotional impact, and its story is particularly well-suited to the animation format.  As you've likely glimpsed from trailers, Pixar's latest provides a nice, bright, poppy color palette for its summer release.  What I only truly appreciated in the theater, though, was the extraordinary texture effects of the elements, particularly Fire and Water (the two main elements in the film).  Pixar has again made the seemingly impossible appear effortless with the natural blurriness and flicker of flames and the smooth but erratic-seeming flow of drips of water.  The idea of elements as people (a bit like Inside Out's emotions) also leads to much of the humor, which is very well done.  Most of it happens naturally, within the flow of "normal" element-city life: water's tendency to cry and the unique products of the Fireplace were some of my favorites.  It's not all happy, bright colors and jokes, though: Pixar makes Element City parallel to real cities in its incorporation of "immigrant" communities (exemplified here by Fire).  The differences among the elements naturally lead to this comparison - and to the implicit segregation - and the effect is moving but not unduly heavy.

Helping to balance out the immigrant themes - some of Pixar's most serious yet - is the rom-com aspect of the story.  You'll find many of the usual genre beats: the awkward first meeting, the jaunt around town together, the traumatic split before the final act, etc.  And just as the use of elements is a good illustration of immigration, the very format of animation turns out to be a great one for romantic comedy.  The characters in Elemental are as expressive as live-action humans, thanks to Pixar's artists, but we're still watching clearly non-human beings.  That allows you to more easily project your own mental images into the story, as rom-coms are so good at inviting us to do.  With a screen packed full of imagination, audiences might therefore have even more going on in their heads than during the usual Pixar adventure.  Speaking of characters, it was nice to see Pixar turn to a cast of (relative) unknowns for the voice acting.  Of course, it's great to give new talent a chance to shine (or rather, to be heard) but it also doubles down on the audience's impressions of the characters or story not being colored by familiar personas - via sight or sound.  Finally, Elemental's animation also allows the action to more closely match the intensity and wonder of the relationship's emotions, from a spectacular underwater date to a perilous and tearful (but ultimately happy!) finale.

***

It was so great to see a Pixar movie in the theater again!  The last time I saw one was 2019's Toy Story 4, which feels like forever ago.  While the premise, or the part of it I got from the trailer, didn't grab my interest at first, I knew immediately that I had to go see it - and, just like most Pixar films, it exceeded my expectations.  Part of my enthusiasm could be the excitement of the theatrical experience but looking back, even when it occasionally seems that a part of the story fell flat or wasn't going anywhere, the movie either quickly got back on track or turned the weakness into a key development later on.  Also: Pixar continues to include a short story before the main film, this time about Up's Carl and dog, Dug.  It's one of the best yet!  So be sure to see this one in a theater while you can.  Amid a sea of summer sequels - even the good ones - it's so refreshing to see another Pixar hit.

* By Pixar - http://www.impawards.com/2023/elemental_ver10.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73800022