Elemental Movie Review: Cute, but feels rather underdeveloped

Elemental is an animated romantic comedy-drama film produced by Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios

Film: Elemental
Cast (voice): Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie, Ronnie del Carmen, Shila Ommi, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Catherine O'Hara, Mason Wertheimer, Ronobir Lahiri
Director: Peter Sohn
Rating: 2.5/5
Runtime: 102 min

'Elemental', Disney and Pixar's latest, is a fairly intriguing attempt to make inclusiveness a major theme of its animated world-building oeuvre. This film, directed by Peter Sohn, from a screenplay by John Hoberh, Kat Likkel, and Brenda Hsueh, aims pretty high by making poignant use of elements like earth, fire, air, and water to fulfil its allegoric representation of the various social classes.

The story is conventional - about an unconventional romance between fire and water in a metropolis where every inhabitant is segregated as per his/her volatility (read immigrant status). The narrative centres around migrants from Fireland. Hot-tempered Ember Lumen (Leah Lewis), a second-generation immigrant who works as an assistant in her father Útrí dár ì Bùrdì (Ronnie del Carmen) and mother Fâsh ì Síddèr (Shila Ommi) aka Bernie and Cinder's bodega shop, is being trained to take over the running once her father retires. The parents, Fire people who emigrated from Fireland, continue to live with original food habits and rigid cultural traditions of honour and lineage. Ember, riddled with anger issues, ruptures a pipe in her father's shop, and city inspector Wade (Mamoudou Athie) gushes in. Following a steamy courtship, he prompts Ember to take a re-look at her priorities. So now, Ember has to decide whether she truly wants to oblige her parents and inherit and run the store or take up an internship opportunity to become an original designer of glass art pieces.

Element City is explored only superficially here. The representation of immigrant communities is also rather muddled with confusing accents and conflating customs. Also, earth and air don't come up for discussion at all other than just existing and merging in the background.

The original intent of a racial allegory gets lost in the unwieldy (though short) narrative that prioritizes romance, family rigidity, cultural chasms, and ADHD symptoms. The symbolism for an interracial love story is not exactly befitting. The pursuit of ordinary goals like sandbagging leaks and glassing out major fissures waylays the weighty, high-concept theme. The issue is further compounded by uneven pacing, distending subplots, and predictable writing. On the face of it, the story doesn't really make sense. Fire and Water are at opposing ends of the elemental spectrum yet here they are preordained to be together. The film shows promise in the use of colour and form. It's not exactly a magical experience but it has its moments. The humorous bits (mostly sight gags), though few and far between, do elevate the experience, and the musical serenades composed by Thomas Newman, enriched by cross-cultural influences, tilt the experience to a cutesy one even when the film, in the overall context, feels under-developed with its unimaginative and rudimentary storytelling.