Review of ELEMENTAL: Formulaic and Flat

June 19, 2023

The world was a place where the elements -- Wind, Land, Water and Fire -- co-existed. Fire elements Bernie and Cinder Lumen established their store in Element City as immigrants. Through the years, Bernie was training their only daughter Ember to take over the store when he retired. While Ember was a natural in sales, she had a very bad temper when dealing with problematic customers. When she threw a tantrum, she literally exploded into flames.

One day, one of her fiery tantrums burst open a water pipe in the basement of the store. While Ember was trying to keep the leak in control by welding the hole with her heat, city water inspector Wade Ripple, a water element, came to investigate. He wrote a report about the store's faulty plumbing which he would file at city hall. Ember realized that the store could face closure with the report, so she chased Wade across town to stop him from submitting it.

Ever since the first "Toy Story" premiered in 1995 all the way to the fourth "Toy Story" in 2019, practically every film produced by Pixar Animation Pictures was a cinematic event. So far, the films released during the pandemic to the present (from "Onward" to "Lightyear") have not been as successful in creating a major impact as their previous films. In fact, "Luca" (2021) and "Turning Red" (2022) were even released direct streaming on Disney+. 

Among the weakest films in the Pixar catalog was "The Good Dinosaur" (2015), which was notoriously called Pixar's first box-office bomb (despite grossing above $300M). The director of that film is Peter Sohn, who is now also the director of this film "Elemental." Sohn based "Elemental" on his own experiences growing up as the son of Korean immigrants in New York City. Viewers would immediately get the metaphoric relation of the elements to race.

The artwork of the classic elements, particularly the central characters of fire and water, were true the Pixar brand of animation. However, the characters were not very "cute" in the way they looked and executed. There were some inconsistencies when it came to the chemical and physical characteristics and behavior of these elements just to suit the needs of the story. The humor was also not that funny enough to dig itself out of its hole. 

There were aspects of cultural pride, filial duty and teen rebellion, but the main story was a very simple love story between two characters who cannot mix by nature -- in this case, water and fire. They faced a difficult challenge together and come out falling in love, but are held back because of family expectations. This is basically the plot of several classic rom-com stories out there. Quite disappointing -- predictable for adults, boring for kids. 5/10.