Pixar’s Elemental shows how the animation studio needs to work harder
Elemental arrives on these shores with the unwanted title of worst performing Pixar movie. Struggling to compete with Spider-Man: Into The Spider-verse, can the family comedy draw
audiences here? It imagines a world in which the elements – earth, fire, water, and air – are people living happily in separate communities, avoiding contact with each other.
This is easy for Ember (voiced by Leah Lewis), an ambitious young fire element working to take
over her family business. But her certainty is shaken when she falls for goofy water element Wade (Mamoudou Athie).
Few studios can build worlds as imaginatively as Pixar. The animation that brings the story to life is remarkable, and Elemental is never less than visually gorgeous. It does, however, all feel a bit familiar. Pixar has walked this path before, telling many wonderful stories about characters finding out what truly makes them happy.
Elemental suffers by comparison, with the studio’s high bar meaning that simply being good
constitutes a disappointment. There’s the occasional lump-in-throat moment, but the Pixar name on the poster means audiences come expecting more. Like director Peter Sohn’s last film, 2015’s The Good Dinosaur, there are many parts to Elemental that will entertain and divert; there’s just nothing here that’s particularly memorable.
Elemental is screening in cinemas now
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