Toy Story 3; Inside Out; Monsters, Inc. – these films are veritable masterpieces. They combined technical wizardry and phenomenal storylines that – despite being set in a toy box or inside a girl’s head, or in a monster’s universe – made absolute sense and contained their own particular logic. For Pixar, this presents a problem: anything less than shining excellence is a singular disappointment. For all Elemental’s many charms, this nonsensical film simply doesn’t cut the mustard.
Elemental is essentially a story about immigration and integration, with a love story at its heart. We meet a couple arriving in Element City from Fire Land. They first dock in an Ellis Island-esque immigration centre, where an official – who can’t understand their pronunciation – gives them their new names: Bernie and Cinder Lumen (Ronnie del Carmen and Shila Vosough). Cinder is pregnant and the couple are like Mary and Joseph, turned away by all the other elements when seeking accommodation. Though to be fair, if I were a tree, I wouldn’t want fire living in my home either.
