★★★★

Looking back – almost three decades back – virtually nothing in the latest feature from Pixar could have been achieved at the dawn of computer animation. Certainly not with any credibility. In Elemental, the studio’s first all out cinema original since 2020’s Onward, flames lick the air with every smoking flicker. People made entirely of water osmose seamlessly in and out of photo real canals, while folk of bark and foliage sprout bright and casually stunning floristry from their branch pits. It’s as though one could reach forth and pluck petals from the screen itself. These days, Toy Story’s groundbreaking animation looks little more than child’s play in comparison. Elemental hasn’t the emotional gut-wrenchary of that original masterpiece but proves, twenty-seven films on, that Pixar still rides a wave of its innovative own even now.

The film’s premise is classic Pixar, almost to a fault. As Inside Out gave sentience to the emotions in our head, Elemental personifies the core elements of the world around us. These being earth, air, water and fire. While the latter two materialise in, more or less, humanoid form, the earth types stump around as might miniature orchards, with air beings existent like floating clouds of candy floss. Air and earth are, here, rather more superfluous to the film than fire and water, whose polarised dynamics serve up a ‘Romeo and Juliet’ tale of star-crossed lovers. It is a well-meant, sometimes cutting but equally clumsy, metaphor that adds to the melting pot themes of racial bias and a very pertinent parallel to contemporary structural racism in the western world.

As the film opens, a haze of sea mist gives way to the arrival of Bernie (Ronnie del Carmen) and Cinder (Shila Ommi) Lumin in Element City. Those aren’t their real names but phonetically simpler alternatives assigned to them by an immigration officer unable to grasp the language of Fire Landians. Such is the first of many hostilities the sky-scraping city presents to outsiders. A water-based transport network could extinguish the couple at any moment, while finding accommodation is no picnic when all the local landlords fear getting burnt. It’s here the allegory stumbles slightly. A man made of wood might very legitimately be wary of living up close and personal alongside a fellow who could reduce you to ashes in seconds flat. Moreover, the film fudges its potency by homogenising a half dozen cultures into a groundless notion of ‘the immigrant’. Even so, the idea is a neat one and the works well enough in context. Nobody in Element City will give the Lumens a chance, not even the in built metropolitan infrastructure.

As have the likes of Minari, In the Heights and, of course, Turning Red in recent years, Elemental’s chief concern is not the immigrant experience but that of the second generation. Leah Lewis voices the lively but hot headed Ember, daughter of Bernie and Cinder and heir to her father’s homegrown convenience store. Naturally, Ember’s compulsion is to please her father and live up to her parents’ dreams and ambitions for their new life. It takes the entrance of an outsider to help her realise that perhaps selling sparklers is perhaps not her dream: ‘Why does anyone get to tell you what you can do with your life?’ This is lachrymose dreamer boy Wade, voiced with gentle heart by Mamoudou Athie.

Elemental marks Pixar’s first out-and-out go at romantic comedy. While the result is never quite achingly romantic, there’s real warmth and wholesome loveliness here, not to mention some rib tickling comedy. Lewis and Athie prove exceptionally cast, with the former’s huskier tones perfectly pitched akin the latter’s more dulcet flow. Even if Ember and Wade’s path to love is a well pre-trodden one, earnest charm does well to enliven the journey. This is slight storytelling, true but well done indeed and beautifully designed. A sense that Elemental only scratches the surface of the world it creates is offset by standout scenes that show its boldly hued potential. Not an inch of the film’s extraordinarily wide screen fails to pop and there are gags in the detail here that will likely take three or four showings for the eagle eye to finally spot.

Yet, even whereby the microcosmic details elude, Elemental’s broader strokes will suffice. Quibbles aside, the film enchants when it counts and delivers big on top-tier art and design. Pixar may no longer be so consistent as once was in knocking innovation out of the park but when it comes to the core components of storytelling, they rarely fail. That much, you see, is elemental.

T.S.