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Posted in: Disney, Kaitlyn Booth, Movies, Pixar, Review | Tagged: disney, elemental, pixar, Review
Elemental Review: A Solid, Mid-Tier Film As Pixar Takes On YA Romance
Elemental is a mid-tier Pixar movie that is releasing at the wrong time. A few years ago, a mid-tier film wouldn't have impacted the studio's fate.
Elemental is Pixar diving into what is essentially a young adult romance, complete with all the tropes that accompany it. Ironically, considering the story, it meanders and seems to get caught up in metaphorical and literal bureaucratic red tape.
Director: Peter Sohn
Summary: Follows Ember and Wade in a city where fire-, water-, land- and air-residents live together.
When it comes to exploring big ideas and putting concepts around them that are pretty simple to understand, Pixar is usually the best in the game. It would be unfair to say one of the crown jewels over at the Disney company has somehow fallen off in recent times because it really hasn't, but circumstances seem to be plaguing the studio. Elemental really needed to be a smash on all fronts after the last three years that Pixar has had.
Between Onward getting its legs cut off from under it from the pandemic and looking like it would underperform before that, to three of its features getting moved to Disney+, to Lightyear underperforming last year, Pixar needed a win. And it looked like Elemental was going to be a win; it got a Cannes premiere which meant they had confidence in it, the concept looked like classic Pixar, but then the early reviews weren't great, and the early box office isn't looking promising. Elemental is a solid mid-tier Pixar movie, but the studio can't survive on mid-tier alone [even if Pixar's mid-tiers are better than what other studios put out, looking at you, Illumination].
Broken down to its basics, Elemental is a young adult romance story. This is Romeo and Juliet taken to its most extreme, and the problem is that kids don't like romance. Pixar is usually pretty good at making movies that appeal to the entire family, but for the first time, this might be a Pixar movie that doesn't appeal to everyone. Pre-teens and above will enjoy the romance and cute little moments between Wade and Ember. Meanwhile, adults will be surprised at how much of this plot relies on bureaucratic red tape and local government.
It's a bit of a weird thing to focus so much of the story on crumbling infrastructure and city citations; perhaps they were going for a whole "this park is getting demolished for an apartment, so we must save it" angle as we would see in some classic kids movies, but that makes sense to kids. A kid will not understand how broken infrastructure doesn't get fixed or why citations matter. While we always say that kids are not small, dumb adults, their way of seeing the world is very straightforward. If that thing is broken, why doesn't someone fix it? If that pipe leaks and they get in trouble for it, why can't they fix it, and it'll be done? Adults understand it isn't that simple; teenagers are beginning to understand that, but young kids will likely find that whole aspect frustrating to watch unfold.
When Elemental switches away from all of those framing devices and focuses on Wade and Ember working through their differences and learning to care about one another, that is where the movie shines. Both of these young people's feelings and the different kinds of support systems they have are relatable. The film does an excellent job of not pitting the two of them against each other. The way that Wade and Ember's parents are raising them is different, but the film doesn't appear to be taking a moral stance on it.
Element City is beautifully realized, and so much is happening in the background that it goes by too fast for you to take it all in. It's clear that a lot of love went into designing this city and these characters. They have emphasized how they had to completely change how they went about animating characters because Ember is not a "Pixar character on fire"; she is "fire." The same applies to Wade; he isn't a "Pixar character that is wet"; he is "water." It's beautifully realized, and staying through the credits means you get to watch a bunch of the little puns you missed go on by, and they are all awesome.
Elemental is a mid-tier Pixar movie that is being released at the wrong time. A few years ago, a mid-tier film wouldn't have impacted the studio's fate. They would have just kept things rolling. However, now is the worst time for something that is just "pretty good" to come along. They needed this to be spectacular during a very busy box office season, it needed weeks of hype from Cannes to get people into theaters, and it got none of that. It's just the worst possible time for Pixar to release something that isn't quite good enough, and we have to wonder if Elemental just sealed Pixar's "direct to Disney+" fate.
Elemental
7/10
Elemental is Pixar diving into what is essentially a young adult romance, complete with all the tropes that accompany it. Ironically, considering the story, it meanders and seems to get caught up in metaphorical and literal bureaucratic red tape.
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