Elemental

• Directed by Peter Sohn
• May 27, 2023 (Cannes) / June 16, 2023 (US)

Voice Cast

• Ember Lumen-Leah Lewis
• Little Kid Ember-Clara Lin Ding
• Big Kid Ember-Reagan To
• Wade Ripple-Mamoudou Athie
• Bernie Lumen-Ronnie del Carmen
• Cinder Lumen-Shila Ommi
• Gale Cumulus-Wendi McLendon-Covey
• Brook Ripple-Catherine O’Hara
• Clod-Mason Wertheimer
• Harold-Ronobir Lahiri
• Flarrietta-Wilma Bonet
• Fern Grouchwood-Joe Pera
• Alan Ripple, Lutz, Earth Pruner-Matt Yang King
• Sparkler Customer-Jeff LaPensee
• C. C. Stump (Wood Immigration Official)-Ben Morris
• Flarry-Jonathan Adams
• Customer, Delivery Person, Earth Landlord-Alex Kapp
• Doorman-P.L. Brown
• Marco and Polo Ripple-Innocent Onanovie Ekakitie
• Eddy Ripple-Krysta Gonzales
• Lake Ripple-Ava Kai Hauser
• Ghibli-Maya Aoki Tuttle
• Additional Voices-Dylan Buccieri, Assaf Cohen, Jessica DiCicco, Terri Douglas, Karen Huie, Arif S. Kinchen, Austin Madison, Cole Massie, Scott Menville, Alisha Mullally, Fred Tatasciore, Kari Wahlgren, and Secunda Wood

A fire element and water element spend time together while trying to save a convenience store owned by the fire element’s father.

I went into Elemental with low expectations. Numerous Disney or Disney connected offerings have underwhelmed me recently. Dial of Destiny. Strange World. All not that good. Yet while not a revelation and with plenty of bad, this was much better than expected and with a little effort could have been special.

First thing is this has a message. Several in fact that come and go and set the stage but vary in prominence before giving way to a love story that is waaaaaay better than any of the message elements. There is no way an adult can miss some of the messages in this. Immigrants encountering bigotry. Infrastructure designed to keep elementals (standing in for racial groups) in the city separate. It does not hide from what it has to say. It is right out in front. At least when needed.

Elemental is also often a thinly veiled allegory of refugees coming to live elsewhere and the oppression that they find in their new home. Heartwarming stuff for a kid’s movie. A message is good in a movie. But they regularly put message before story and that is when the movie is weakest. Why? It feels a bit like a lecture.

Yet it is not a complete loss. A romance develops between the central figures of the fire element Ember and the water element Wade. It is sweet and cute and often touching. It ticks all the right boxes. It’s the old-style cross-cultural romance of two people from two very different backgrounds that click when they meet. Been done 1000 times and when done right can get all the feels. And that part is done right.

Ember is clearly falling for Wade from the initial meet cute but he’s about as weak and spineless as they come. How he’s a functional individual I don’t know. And he’s borderline incompetent. Yet it does have a level of sweetness to it. I can’t deny that. But those moments are undermined when Wade rather than being romantic is just spineless and dysfunctionally uncertain.

Ember for her part can be condescending to Wade who just won’t go away which is certainly a bit creepy when I write it out. And there was the Earth kid Clod who bordered on obsessive like Wade. Yet treated as sweet. Wear the woman of your dreams down with stalking because it might work. Is that what they are saying?

Ember’s take charge attitude is not backed up by any evidence of her ever being right. Her lack of self-control causes serious issues not only for her but eventually for her whole neighborhood because often she makes things worse by her actions. Is there some message in that?

Ember must save her father’s business which is about to get shutdown because of numerous code violations registered by Wade. The need for them to connect that way came off as padding. A simple generic meet cute would’ve connected the two and the clearly poor infrastructure of an oppressed minority could’ve certainly failed without them having ever been involved in that. Without having to go through all that extraneous it would’ve allowed the storytellers to focus more on the romance.

I was astounded that they made Ember’s mother and father into caricatures of immigrant personalities. I’m serious! I’m not sure exactly what they were aiming for but if you’re going for a message having characters that are caricatures of any type seems like a bad move. 

This was saved by that romance and the cross-cultural elements. Ember feels a pull between honoring her culture and being true to herself. She has been seeing her future as taking over her father’s bodega The Fireplace yet deep down does not want that. She wants something for herself besides selling traditional goods of her people but she has never admitted that to herself and is not sure right away of what that is.

While Ember does find her own path Wade never really does. He’s been bouncing from job to job and since they’re leaving the city it’s clear he’s going to be bouncing to yet another job. His only direction is Ember. Why not both find something and be like bacon for the other. Not necessary but the presence improves things.

And maybe there is even a little bit of racism on Ember’s part since Wade is water and she’s fire and she says they don’t mix. Wade by staying true to his heart shows that they can find away. He’s more open to emotion while she is closed off. I really wish they had taken the time out to grow a racism allegory. It might have made the other messages they had easier to express.

This film started so very weak yet managed to end on a bit of an upswing. And it certainly has some heavy-handed elements. But once they ignore them in favor of the meat of the film-the romance-everything became better. The messages when they became part of the romance came through so much more easily than before.

If you can get past the heavy-handed messaging of the opening once they get to the romance it will make watching Elemental worth your while. Not a strong Pixar at offering but one that could’ve been improved with a little bit more work.