Elemental

Pixar burst on the scene with their 1995 Oscar winning animated hit Toy Story and has been innovating and kicking butt ever since. With few critical and audience misses these films have established themselves as safe bets not to be missed. With this in mind I happily headed to my local theater to check out this summer’s offering, Elemental.  A film about the love story between two anthropomorphic elements (fire and water) against the backdrop of immigration.

Things start off with a new short prior to the film, Carl’s Date featuring Carl and Dug from Up. I definitely feel some kind of way about this short and none of it is particularly good.  Maybe I’m just old, but the whole thing felt cheap and disrespectful to the trauma dump of Up and Ed Asner.

As for the main attraction, things didn’t get much better. I'm keeping this one short and not so sweet because honestly, I feel no desire to spend much time thinking about this one.

As expected, the world building animation, rich and vibrant colors of Elemental are beautiful and a joy to behold. The animation and the musical score are by far the best things about this film.  As for the other elements of Elemental there’s not much to be desired.

The story is far from new and pretty standard rom-com opposites attract blah, blah, blah fare.  Ok, I can hang with that.  

The problem is in this rendition I simply didn’t care.  

The main characters of Ember and Wade are boring, uninspired, and lifeless.  There was nothing to like about either of them individually let alone together, making it hard to be invested in the story at all. I had serious The Good Dinosaur vibes (not a fave) watching this.  Both films being co-written and directed by Peter Sohn may be the common factor.  Perhaps stick to the acting for a while my man? 

As stated, except for the visuals Elemental and soundtrack is an hour forty-nine minutes of pure unadulterated, meh, and sadly, a completely forgettable film.  An example of a good idea that is never fully executed and done so poorly. 

Bland script, heavy handed messaging. Weak underdeveloped characters. Little to no Pixar/Disney magic to be found.  

End of the day, Elemental, it’s not fun. It’s not entertaining. It’s not worth a trip to the theater to see. 

Elemental gets a 4 from me.

#elemental