Elemental

➤ Rated PG
➤ Theaters
➤ S1 / V2 / L1*

Pixar hasn’t had a hit in four years, but don’t expect its newest film, Elemental, to pull the studio out of its slump.

The film is set in Elemental City, where citizens made of earth, wind, fire, and water all live alongside each other, though not always easily. In this animated romantic comedy, a water elemental named Wade falls in love with a fire elemental named Ember. Ember likes Wade too, but she’s afraid her father won’t approve of her dating a water guy.

In Elemental City, the fire people are the most recent immigrants, and director Peter Sohn, whose parents immigrated from Korea, aspires to explain the immigrant experience in America. Water people stand in for white folks—we’re told the city was built with them in mind—and in one scene, Wade’s rich liberal family flubs attempts to be gracious to Ember by indulging in cultural stereotypes. It’s meant to be cringey, but everything is just too on the nose.

Elemental feels like a bad ­animated remake of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. The movie might have been better if it had been about Koreans living in America, but swapping ethnicity for elementality without creating unique problems and situations makes for poor social commentary and a preachy script. We also get lazy jokes about Ember being “hot,” and Pixar sneaks in some LGBT elements because—you know—representation.

The animation is colorful, but it doesn’t push the boundaries of the medium. Pixar is definitely in a rut. The only thing Elemental has going for it is that, at an hour and a half, it’s relatively short. Even so, many kids and adults will fidget during this dull story. It’s a shame Disney has managed to quench Pixar’s creative flame.

*Ratings from kids-in-mind.com, with quantity of sexual (S), violent (V), and foul language (L) content on a 0-10 scale, with 10 high

Top-grossing Pixar movies

• Incredibles 2 / 2018
• Finding Dory / 2016
• Toy Story 4 / 2019
• Toy Story 3 / 2010
• Inside Out / 2015
• Finding Nemo / 2003
• Up / 2009
• Monsters University / 2013
• The Incredibles / 2004
• Monsters Inc. / 2001

Source: boxofficemojo.com