Pixar’s latest animation takes us to Element City, a place where air, wind, fire and earth people all live together in harmony. Well, almost. The anthropomorphised blobs of ‘fire’ are rather frowned upon, as Bernie (voiced by Ronnie Del Carmen) and Cinder (Shila Ommi) soon discover when they arrive from their homeland. Renting an apartment is a big no-no, when the landlords are all ‘earth’ people that look like tree shrubs and naturally consider fire a danger ("Dry leaves!" squawks one, before slamming the door in their faces).
Eventually Bernie and Cinder settle outside the city in Fire Town, where they open a store, Fireplace, selling all sorts of fire-related paraphernalia (like coal nuts, made by Bernie). Using this as a backdrop, Elemental could’ve been an interesting study of the immigrant experience. But it soon switches to a more conventional coming-of-age story: moving on a few years, it finds Bernie and Cinder’s grown-up daughter Ember (Leah Lewis) ready to take over the store… were it not for the fact she has a terrible temper ("Take a break, make connection," she keeps saying, like a mantra).
