movie review elemental

At its best, Pixar is unbeatable, making clever, charming, and brightly original films to touch the heart and spark the imagination. And so it’s been dispiriting to see the animation studio behind such emotive triumphs as “ Toy Story ,” “ Ratatouille ,” “ Up ,” and “ Inside Out ”—among the best films of their respective years, bar none—recently fall short of its past standard of excellence.

It’s not just that modern-day Pixar has focused on reprising its greatest hits with a parade of sequels (“ Toy Story 4 ,” “ Incredibles 2 ,” “ Lightyear ”), or that the studio’s slate of recent originals (“ Soul ,” “ Luca ,” “ Turning Red ”) have all, oddly enough, centered on characters transforming into animals (a revealing trope for its prevalence in films about feeling different, whose initially diverse protagonists invariably spend most of the runtime covered in fur or scales). Also absent lately at Pixar, a subsidiary of Disney since 2006, is the mastery of execution that had distinguished the studio, a brilliance for establishing high-concept premises and effortlessly navigating their particulars.

“Elemental,” Disney and Pixar’s latest, feels emblematic of the studio’s struggle to recapture its original magic, making a mess of its world-building in service of a conventional story that fails the talent of the animators involved. Set in a world where natural elements—earth, fire, water, air—coexist in a New York-style metropolis, each representing different social classes, the film—directed by Peter Sohn , from a screenplay by John Hoberh, Kat Likkel , and Brenda Hsueh —aims high with that central metaphor but is set immediately off-balance by its unwieldiness as racial allegory, an issue compounded by haphazard pacing and writing so flatly predictable it suggests a Pixar film authored by an AI algorithm. At times bordering on the nonsensical, the film feels under-developed rather than universal, a colorful missed opportunity.

Presented as the closing-night selection of the 76th Cannes Film Festival, ahead of its stateside release in mid-June, “Elemental” envisions a densely populated urban sprawl similar to that of Disney’s anthrozoomorphic “ Zootopia ,” in which ideas of racial discrimination were uneasily reduced to “predator and prey” dynamics to allow for a story that focused more on dismantling personal prejudices than systemic racism. In Element City, a similarly ill-advised simplification is at work (though Sohn has explained that his Korean heritage and desire to make a film about assimilation fueled some of the creative decisions), and there’s even a similar eyebrow to raise with regard to the legitimate danger that these contrasting elements, like foxes to rabbits, pose to one another.

In “Elemental,” socially privileged water people flow back and forth through slickly designed high-rises and have no issue splashing down the city’s grand canals and monorails, which were designed for their gelatinous-blob bods, whereas fire folk are sequestered to Firetown, where their tight-knit community reflects East Asian, Middle Eastern, and European traditions—and accents run the gamut from Italian to Jamaican, Iranian, and West Indian, in a way that uncomfortably positions fire as representative as all immigrants and water as representative of the white upper-class. Earth and air, meanwhile, barely register; we see earth people who sprout daisies from their dirt-brown armpits, and cotton candy-esque cloud puffs playing “airball” in Cyclone Stadium, but the film is surprisingly non-committal in imagining the chemistry of inner-city elements interacting. Background sight gags abound, such as the “hot logs” that fire folk chow down on, but the actual ins and outs of Element City are explored only superficially, such as the revelation that all these elements take advantage of the same public transit. Replete with computer-generated inhabitants and generic modernist structures, its milieu feels more like concept art, to be further detailed at some point in the animation process, than a fully thought-through, lived-in environment.

“Elemental” centers on hot-tempered Ember Lumen ( Leah Lewis , of “ The Half of It ”), a second-generation immigrant who works as an assistant in her father’s bodega shop. Fire people who emigrated from Fireland, from whence they brought spicy food and rigid cultural traditions of honor and lineage, Ember and her father Útrí dár ì Bùrdì ( Ronnie del Carmen )—though he and his wife Fâsh ì Síddèr ( Shila Ommi ) had their names Anglicized to Bernie and Cinder at the “Elemental” equivalent of Ellis Island—have a close relationship as he readies her to take over the family business. Ember, though, is questioning whether or not she truly wants to inherit the store, as her beloved “ashfa” says he expects, or whether her gifts—such as the ability to heat a hot-air balloon and mold glass with her hands—might lead her in another direction.

Unable to control her emotions, which can take her from red-hot into a more ominous purple shade, Ember one day ruptures a pipe in her father’s shop, at which point city inspector Wade ( Mamoudou Athie ) gushes in. Wade’s been investigating the city’s dilapidated canal system, searching for the source of a leak that keeps flooding Ember’s basement but imperils all of Firetown. Determined to keep her father’s business from going under, Ember pursues and then quickly joins forces with Wade. As romance sparks between the two, they make for a particularly odd couple given one of the film’s less-than-convincing rules: that “elements don’t mix,” for reasons both practical and parochial, in Element City. Ember might extinguish Wade, while he could douse her flame, but their inevitably steamy romance is moreso forbidden because her father would never approve, setting up “Elemental” as an interracial love story, the kind Pixar hasn’t yet told with human characters.

From there, the film works like a checklist of Pixar storytelling clichés, its two opposites at first getting on one another’s last nerve but gradually forming a close bond, before separating over what amounts to a basic misunderstanding, which is resolved in climactic fashion as the two rescue one another from a looming threat and rekindle their love. Still, as the plot’s frantically paced chain reaction of events keeps Ember and Wade together, their relationship becomes the film’s slight but endearing center, a welcome respite from the mixed metaphors and misshapen conceptual mechanics that often threaten to break the story’s inner reality. (Why, for example, is what will happen if Ember and Wade touch such a mystery to them both, in a city whose ceramic and terracotta glass structures point to other elements interacting?)

Lewis voices Ember with a playful warmth that nicely complements the bubbling affability that Athie brings to Wade, while the animation of both their bodies—hers flickering then suddenly ablaze with emotion, heat wafting upward; his fluid and transparent, prone to collapsing into a puddle on the ground—is always exciting to look at, emphasizing malleability and dabbling in abstraction.

But even the film’s promising use of color, form, and movement feels hemmed in by the unimaginative storytelling. Only a few standout sequences—a visit to an underwater garden of Vivisteria flowers, a detour into hand-drawn animation that tells a love story in minimal, swirling lines—separate “Elemental” from any other Pixar film in which the characters are phosphorescent little blobs traveling through realistically animated cityscapes, and as rapidly as the film progresses it never goes anywhere unexpected.

There’s similarly nothing in “Elemental” to recall the wondrous aesthetic imagination of modern Pixar classics like “ Finding Nemo ” and “ Wall-E ,” with the exception of a rich score by composer Thomas Newman that takes its cues from a potpourri of global musical traditions and presents a more fully formed vision of cross-cultural exchange than the film’s muddled depiction of immigrant communities. Perhaps fittingly for a film that would have more accurately been titled “When Fire Met Water…,” “Elemental” is combustible enough from minute to minute, but it evaporates from memory the second you leave the theater.

This review was filed from the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. “Elemental” is now playing in theaters.

Isaac Feldberg

Isaac Feldberg is an entertainment journalist currently based in Chicago, who’s been writing professionally for nine years and hopes to stay at it for a few more.

Leah Lewis as Ember Lumen (voice)
Mamoudou Athie as Wade Ripple (voice)
Ronnie del Carmen as Bernie Lumen (voice)
Shila Ommi as Cinder Lumen (voice)
Wendi McLendon-Covey as Gale (voice)
Catherine O’Hara as Brook Ripple (voice)
Mason Wertheimer as Clod (voice)
Ronobir Lahiri as Harold (voice)
Wilma Bonet as Flarrietta (voice)
Joe Pera as Fern (voice)
Matthew Yang King as Alan / Lutz / Earth Pruner (voice)
Clara Lin Ding as Little Kid Ember (voice)
Reagan To as Big Kid Ember (voice)

Writer (story)

Brenda Hsueh
John Hoberg

Cinematographer

David Juan Bianchi
Jean-Claude Kalache
Stephen Schaffer
Thomas Newman

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‘Elemental’ Review: Sparks Fly

The latest movie from Disney/Pixar tucks a romantic comedy inside a high-concept premise. It’s smoldering and splashy.

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A man made of water and a woman made of fire sit in a movie theater together, with other patrons in the background.

By Amy Nicholson

“Elemental” is the latest Pixar premise to feel like someone laced the cafeteria’s kombucha keg with ayahuasca. Starting eight years ago with “Inside Out,” the animation company has transformed cartoons into a form of group therapy that encourages audiences to ruminate on inner peace, death (“Coco”) and resurrection (“Soul”). This story is simpler (elemental, even). It’s a girl-meets-boy cross-cultural romantic comedy — a good one that woos us to root for the big kiss. But the Pixar-brand psychotropic flourish comes from which cultures. Here, they are water, earth, air and fire — the four classical elements that the ancient philosopher Empedocles used to explain our world — all tenuously coexisting in Element City, a Manhattan analogue founded by the first droplet to ooze out of the primordial sea. The girl, Ember Lumen (voiced by Leah Lewis), is a leggy lick of flame; her crush, Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie), is a drip. When she brushes near him, his body roils. Steamy.

This setup sounds strange and looks stranger. Yet, the four classical elements are one of civilization’s great unifiers, a cosmological theory shared by the Hindu Vedas, the Buddhist Mahabhuta, the Kongo cosmogram, the Indigenous medicine wheel and the zodiac. We’ve long interpreted life through water, earth, air and fire. Now, the trick is to see the life in them, once we squint past the visually overwhelming chaos of Element City, a smelting pot of puns and allusions.

You’d have to freeze-frame each scene to absorb all the sight gags: fire-mommies pushing fire-babies in BBQ grills, tree-couples tenderly harvesting each other’s apples, luxury tower aquariums with sunken swimming pools for a living room, whirlwind basketball games that hawk souvenir cloud-shaped pants. Even then, the yuks spillith over into the closing credits whose margins are cluttered with funny bits of illustrated flotsam like Lighterfinger candy bars and Sizzlemint gum.

The suspension of disbelief is so staggering that one flaw in the execution would cause the whole gimmick to collapse. I decided to trust the director, Peter Sohn, during the opening sequence. As Ember’s future parents, Bernie and Cinder (Ronnie del Carmen and Shila Ommi) disembark upon a bizarro Ellis Island, all-too-aware that they’re two of the earliest fireball émigrés, I clocked her father’s chain mail pants and relaxed. Metal knickers are the kind of minutia that tells you Sohn and the three screenwriters (John Hoberg, Kat Likkel and Brenda Hsueh) have pored over every corner of their high concept, allowing us to make the mental switch from scanning the landscape suspiciously to marveling in the details.

The staggering design ambition balances out the plot’s affecting, relatable ordinariness, which kicks in a couple of decades after the Lumens settle in and open a store that ignites a thriving fire community. By the time Ember is an adult, the Firish (as in “Kiss Me, I’m…”) have erected blocks of residential kilns that resemble a modernized Cappadocia. Yet, there’s no forgetting that Element City was once a wets-only town. The Wetro light rail zipping overhead creates a splash zone of urban blight in its wake.

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Review: The story may be basic, but the visually dazzling ‘Elemental’ has romance to burn

Ember (voiced by Leah Lewis) and Wade (Mamoudou Athie) in the movie “Elemental.”

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It’s rare that beloved animation studio Pixar makes a straightforward romantic movie — the films it produces frequently focus on family love and friendship. It’s not often we see a swooning love story between two individuals such as the one in Peter Sohn’s “Elemental,” a kind of “Romeo and Juliet” riff featuring the forbidden love between two elements that don’t usually mix: fire and water.

“Elemental” is also an immigrant story, about a family forced to leave their homeland to seek a new life in a strange place. A pre-title sequence follows Bernie (Ronnie del Carmen) and Cinder (Shila Ommi) as they arrive in Elemental City from their home in Fireland. Though water, earth, air and fire share a complicated coexistence in this bustling metropolis, Bernie and Cinder don’t find warm hospitality there. As they seek shelter for their burgeoning family with Cinder pregnant and are turned away, it harks back to the biblical story of the birth of Jesus.

The couple transform their “manger,” a crumbling old building, into the Fireplace, a shop and cafe that serves as the hub of Firish culture in the heart of Firetown. They hope that their daughter Ember ( Leah Lewis ) will be able to take over the shop when she’s ready, passing on their business to her with the same reverence that they intend to pass on their beloved, ever-burning Firish blue flame.

Wade (voiced by Mamoudou Athie) and Ember (Leah Lewis) in the movie “Elemental.”

Sohn and screenwriters John Hoberg, Kat Likkel and Brenda Hsueh are working well-known, much-beloved stories and tropes, transposing these tales into this fantastical world of humanoid elements. These character types — a pair of star-crossed lovers, or a gruff but loving immigrant father, fiercely proud and protective of his only daughter who is caught in a perfectionism trap — make it easy to slip into their emotional journey, even if they are made of fire, earth, water and air, and possess all the attendant chemical and physical qualities of each element.

Accepting that the story beats are overly familiar is a bargain one makes with the filmmakers in order to enjoy the visually dazzling world of “Elemental.” One has to wonder if the concept for the film came about because the Pixar animators wanted a chance to demonstrate their aptitude with such challenging substances as fire and water. The character’s surfaces are constantly moving: faces of flame flicker and crackle with the grace of a watercolor painting; bubbles float and churn and pop through the bodies of the watery folk, held together with a tenuous viscosity. It’s a truly eye-popping and detailed expression of animation technology and technique. The environments of Element City are vibrantly rendered, especially Firetown, a vague melange of Asian, Eastern European and Middle Eastern influences, which are reflected in Thomas Newman’s score.

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But it’s the romance that makes “Elemental” worth your time and emotional investment, thanks to a romantic male lead who isn’t made up of the same stuff we’ve seen in Disney movies of yore. Wade ( Mamoudou Athie ) is water, and he’s an emotional guy. After Ember loses her temper and bursts a pipe in the shop, Wade, a chipper city inspector, comes flowing into her life. They pair up to track down the source of the leak that threatens Firetown and the Fireplace, and along the way fall in love, much to Ember’s chagrin, fearing the disapproval of her parents.

But this modern kind of love proves irresistible. It’s a refreshing update to Shakespeare’s hormonal teens, and the proud, barrel-chested Disney princes of yore. Voiced with a unique tenderness by Athie, what makes Wade lovable is his kindness, his vulnerability, his willingness to share his emotions and his delight in all of Ember’s distinctly fiery qualities. She’s spunky and hot-headed, he’s sweet and adorable — if they touch, it could be a disaster, but somehow, their chemistry just works, bringing the charming “Elemental” to a lively roiling boil.

Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

‘Elemental’

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Elemental Movie Poster: Ember and Wade look at each other, against a black background

Common Sense Says
Parents Say 57 Reviews
Kids Say 59 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Heartfelt, romantic fable about immigrant experience.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 6+?

Many explosive bursts of fire, especially when Ember loses her temper. A couple

A married couple hold hands and embrace. Lots of romantic moments between main c

"Dang," "what the...," and a couple of curse-word stand-ins, like "ash" ("lazy a

Nothing on-screen, but plenty of off-screen merchandise tie-ins include apparel,

Any Positive Content?

Focuses on importance of compassion, empathy, and perseverance. Encourages hones

Ember is a loyal, loving daughter to devoted parents who believe her dream is to

Diverse voice cast includes Chinese American actor Leah Lewis; Mamoudou Athie, w

Even though it's a fantasy, the movie serves as an allegory to teach viewers abo

Violence & Scariness

Many explosive bursts of fire, especially when Ember loses her temper. A couple of upsetting scenes show how a natural disaster involving water destroyed a lot of Fireland's homes and endangered its people. Rushing water/large waves also put characters in danger, nearly destroy the fire community in Element City, and seem to kill one character ( spoiler alert : they aren't dead!). In general, fire characters can cause damage to other elements if they get too close, and water characters can snuff out (usually temporarily, but occasionally for good) fire characters. A dying grandmother's wish is recalled (she seems to disintegrate into ash when her time is up). Yelling, arguments.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A married couple hold hands and embrace. Lots of romantic moments between main characters Ember and Wade. They spend a lot of time together; a few pivotal scenes of them trying to touch and then successfully touching, dancing, embracing. They kiss briefly. Two trees who are spotted plucking fruit from each other realize they've been caught and say it's "just a little pruning," which is repeated later in a jokey way. A few other couples are spotted on dates holding hands, hugging and even kissing (including in the end-credit sequence). A character says "you're so hot" and "you're smoking," but he means it literally, not in the suggestive way the fire character initially believes. A young tree character flirts with Ember and later another girl.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

"Dang," "what the...," and a couple of curse-word stand-ins, like "ash" ("lazy ash") and "fluffing," etc. Also "stupid," "crazy," "jerk," "dang," "oh gosh," "holy dewdrop," "God" (as an exclamation), "hanky panky," and element-based insults like "fireball" and "cloudpuffs." Language that makes it clear that other elements discriminate against fire people -- like "you don't have an accent," "go back to Fireland," and "you don't belong here."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Nothing on-screen, but plenty of off-screen merchandise tie-ins include apparel, toys, figurines, games, books, and household goods.

Positive Messages

Focuses on importance of compassion, empathy, and perseverance. Encourages honest communication between parents and children, as well as romantic partners. Following your dreams while remaining loyal to your family and honoring your parents is a major theme, as is idea that people should be sensitive to others' cultural/racial background, upbringing, and class. Explores the tension between privilege and duty.

Positive Role Models

Ember is a loyal, loving daughter to devoted parents who believe her dream is to take over the family business. She struggles with her temper, but she uses mindfulness techniques to control it (with mixed results). She isn't particularly open-minded at first but learns to appreciate the rest of the elements and how the Fire folks can learn to collaborate and coexist with them. Wade is sensitive, emotional, and kind. He and his family cry easily and are more open with one another. He comes from a position of privilege but is open-minded (and open-hearted). Ember's parents have sacrificed a lot for her, and they want her to have a successful, happy life.

Diverse Representations

Diverse voice cast includes Chinese American actor Leah Lewis; Mamoudou Athie, who's Black; Filipino actor Ronnie del Carmen; Iranian-born actor Shila Ommi. Both director Peter Sohn and writer Brenda Hsueh are Asian American. The elements (fire, water, earth, air) are essentially stand-ins for human racial/ethnic immigrant and refugee groups in a caste system (with fire, whose cultural markers seem meant to suggest those of Middle Eastern countries, seemingly the outcasts). Characters use unwelcoming phrases that have parallels with racist/classist statements -- e.g., "elements don't mix," "go back to Fireland," "Fire doesn't belong here," etc. Ember's parents are given new names by officials who can't pronounce their real names when they first arrive in Element City, and a water character says "you speak so well and clearly" to Ember, who clearly considers it a microaggression, since she grew up speaking the same language as the water family. (The water character looks embarrassed by his comment.) Wade has a queer relative whose girlfriend is introduced to Ember at a family dinner.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Educational Value

Even though it's a fantasy, the movie serves as an allegory to teach viewers about the immigrant experience, discrimination, segregation, and cross-cultural relationships.

Parents need to know that Pixar's Elemental is a beautifully animated fable about the immigrant experience. It's set in Element City, where fire, earth, water, and air people coexist, but fire people are mistreated and discriminated against. That makes it hard for fiery Ember (voiced by Leah Lewis ) to trust watery Wade ( Mamoudou Athie ), but as they work together to save her family's store, Ember starts to open her mind to the idea of cross-element friendship (and more!) while also teaching Wade about the injustices the fire folks have faced. There's more romance here than in non-princess Disney Pixar films, but Ember and Wade are young adults, not kids or teens. Characters hold hands, flirt, embrace, dance, touch, and kiss briefly. Language includes discriminatory comments said to fire folks (such as "go back to Fireland"), as well as insults like "stupid" and "jerk" and swearing stand-ins (e.g., "lazy ash"). Diversity and immigration are major themes of the story, as are prejudice; the importance of communication, empathy, and compassion; and the unique challenges faced by the children of immigrants and refugees. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

cartoon character made of fire wears a concerned expression on face

Parent and Kid Reviews

Parents say (57)
Kids say (59)

Based on 57 parent reviews

Fun film that's not really for sub 13 y/os

What's the story.

ELEMENTAL is set in Element City, where water, earth, air, and fire people live together -- but the fire folks have been discriminated against and mostly live separately from the other elements, in their own community. The movie opens with a fire couple arriving at an Ellis Island-like processing center, where they're dubbed Cinder (voiced by Shila Ommi) and Bernie ( Ronnie del Carmen ) Lumen because the agent who helps them can't understand their actual names. They eventually have a baby girl named Ember and buy a rundown building that they fix up to be both their home and their livelihood: a thriving convenience store that becomes a neighborhood hub. Ember grows up knowing that she'll eventually run the shop, although she has trouble tamping down her temper with difficult customers. As a young adult, Ember ( Leah Lewis ) is on the cusp of proving that she's ready to manage the store, but one of her hotheaded outbursts causes Wade Ripple ( Mamoudou Athie ), an emotional water guy, to get pulled in through the pipes. Wade turns out to be a government inspector, who feels duty bound to file a pile of citations, which will close the shop if they go through. Determined to keep the crisis a secret from her aging parents, Ember teams up with Wade to find a way to save the store. During their time together, they encourage each other and start to wonder whether different elements can mix, despite what they've always been taught.

Is It Any Good?

Director Peter Sohn 's beautifully animated allegory is a simple but sweet story that brings the immigrant journey and the first-generation experience to vibrant life. While the film's plot isn't quite as robust as those of Disney Pixar's most famous adventures, Elemental does touchingly delve into the challenges and triumphs of being the child of refugees and growing up immersed in a culturally homogenous community. It shows both the comfort and strength of being around your own people and the fact that wider society can be prejudiced. Ember's dilemma -- whether to sacrifice her own feelings in order to honor her parents or to follow her own desires but risk hurting those who raised her -- is authentic, if oversimplified. The nuances are right: Ember wants to be a "good daughter," to fulfill her duty, to take up the mantle from her stressed and tired father. But as she explores Element City, gets to know Wade, and discovers her more artistic side (she's a talented glass blower), she must figure out whether her future contains more possibilities than she imagined.

Lewis and Athie are both well cast, embodying two opposing examples of young adulthood -- one focused on pleasing their parents by pursuing a specific goal and the other willing to flit from job to job until they find "their thing." The parents' voices -- including Wade's widowed mom, voiced by the inimitable Catherine O'Hara -- are also expressive and humorous. And the movie's dating aspects are tender, if a little obvious. Wade and Ember's opposites-attract chemistry is funny until it's clear that Ember really is concerned that her family will disown her if she dates a "water guy." Wade's family, by contrast, is immediately Team Ember, heartily welcoming her (albeit a bit awkwardly, thanks to the clueless old uncle who makes a mildly racist comment). The main characters' slow-burn (pun intended) relationship aside, Elemental has astonishingly gorgeous and detailed animation. The various element folks are vividly colorful, with visceral textures and fantastic (and fantastical) landscapes and movements. The glass-making scenes are especially memorable, and the water-based disasters devastating. While the littlest viewers may not pick up on all of the story's nuances, they'll still understand the importance of inclusion, family, and love.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about what Elemental has to say about the immigrant experience. How does Ember's situation embody what life can be like for immigrants' children?

Some of the movie's scenes are sad or scary. Is it OK for a kids' movie to not be cheerful and silly all the time? How much scary stuff can young kids handle?

The characters learn and demonstrate character strengths like compassion , perseverance , and empathy . Why are these important?

Discuss the quality of the animation in the movie. How do the details of the elements stand out?

How are race and discrimination addressed in the movie? What parallels can you see to our real life?

Movie Details

In theaters : June 16, 2023
On DVD or streaming : September 26, 2023
Cast : Leah Lewis , Mamoudou Athie , Ronnie Del Carmen
Director : Peter Sohn
Inclusion Information : Asian directors, Female actors, Black actors, Female writers, Asian writers
Studio : Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Genre : Family and Kids
Topics : Magic and Fantasy , Friendship
Character Strengths : Communication , Compassion , Empathy , Perseverance
Run time : 103 minutes
MPAA rating : PG
MPAA explanation : some peril, thematic elements and brief language
Award : Common Sense Selection
Last updated : August 3, 2024

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Matthew Yang King, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Mason Wertheimer, Leah Lewis, and Mamoudou Athie in Elemental (2023)

Follows Ember and Wade, in a city where fire-, water-, earth- and air-residents live together. Follows Ember and Wade, in a city where fire-, water-, earth- and air-residents live together. Follows Ember and Wade, in a city where fire-, water-, earth- and air-residents live together.

John Hoberg
Brenda Hsueh
Mamoudou Athie
Ronnie Del Carmen
471 User reviews
231 Critic reviews
58 Metascore
1 win & 65 nominations total

Top cast 19

(as Matt Yang King)
Little Kid Ember

Big Kid Ember

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The 'Elemental' Cast Get Vocal

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Trivia The film is based on director Peter Sohn 's life with his parents immigrating to the USA from Korea - not speaking English and settling into the Bronx. Sohn's family also opened a grocery store named Sohn's Fruits and Vegetables - similar to Ember's family in the film.
Goofs When Ember leaves for the date at Alkali theater, she's wearing a jacket with a hood. After the date when she and Wade enter the elevator, the jacket is gone and the hood is now part of her dress.

Ember : The only way to repay a sacrifice so big is by sacrificing your life, too.

Crazy credits At the end of the credits, there is a blue flame shrine that pays tribute to Pixar animators who all died in 2022 or 2023: Ralph Eggleston , Thomas Gonzales , Amber Martorelli, and J. Garett Sheldrew .
Connections Featured in AniMat's Crazy Cartoon Cast: It's Time to Get Things Started (2022)
Soundtracks Steal the Show Music by Lauv (as Ari Leff) and Thomas Newman Lyrics by Lauv (as Ari Leff) and Michael Matosic Performed by Lauv Produced by Lauv and Thomas Newman Mixed by Mike Crossey

User reviews 471

Sep 26, 2023
How long is Elemental? Powered by Alexa
June 16, 2023 (United States)
United States
Walt Disney Feature Animation - 500 S. Buena Vista Street, Burbank, California, USA
Walt Disney Pictures
Pixar Animation Studios
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$200,000,000 (estimated)
$154,426,697
$29,602,429
Jun 18, 2023
$496,444,308

Technical specs

Runtime 1 hour 41 minutes
Dolby Digital
Dolby Atmos
Dolby Surround 7.1
D-Cinema 96kHz Dolby Surround 7.1
D-Cinema 96kHz 7.1

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Action/Adventure , Animation , Comedy

Content Caution

In Theaters

June 15, 2023
Leah Lewis as Ember Lumen; Mamoudou Athie as Wade Ripple; Ronnie Del Carmen as Bernie Lumen; Shila Ommi as Cinder Lumen; Wendi McLendon-Covey as Gale; Catherine O’Hara as Brook Ripple; Mason Wertheimer as Clod; Joe Pera as Fern; Matthew Yang King as Alan Ripple; Innocent Ekakitie as Marco and Polo Ripple

Home Release Date

August 15, 2023

Distributor

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures; Disney+

Movie Review

Element City: Families come here to build new lives, raise their children, fulfill their wildest dreams. It’s the one place where every element peacefully coexists in harmony.

Except fire, that is. And Ember Lumen is sick of it.

Ember’s parents were the first Fire people to migrate to Element City. Since then, they’ve helped establish an entire community, providing food, toys and wisdom through their shop, the Fireplace.

Bernie, Ember’s dad, wants to retire and give the shop to Ember. But he won’t do it until she can control her purple-hot temper.

Only, that’s really hard when there’s so much to be upset about. Element City wasn’t designed with Fire people in mind. So Ember can’t even leave Firetown without accidentally burning the leaves off Earth people or boiling Water people to the point of evaporation. And even in her own neighborhood, she has to carry around an umbrella to protect her from water spilling over from Element City’s transportation canals.

Still, Ember’s determined to prove she can keep her cool and run the shop.

But when Wade Ripple, a Water person who works for the city’s building code office, accidentally bursts through the Fireplace’s pipes, elements clash.

Wade immediately cites the Fireplace for a number of code violations—not that he wants to, mind you, it’s just his job. But after seeing Ember’s fiery passion, he agrees to help her save the Fireplace from being shut down by the city.

Pretty soon, Wade shows Ember all that Element City has to offer. And she realizes that despite prejudices held by even her own parents, there just might be a way for elements to mix.

Positive Elements

Ember is incredibly loyal to her family and her community. She’s grateful to her parents for leaving their home in order to build a better life for her in the city. And she considers it an honor to sacrifice her own desires for the needs of her family.

Unfortunately, this loyalty makes Ember feel guilty when she begins to fall for Wade. She’s been told her entire life that “elements don’t mix.” And she worries that if she pursues a future with Wade (or a future outside her family’s shop), it’ll break her father’s heart.

However, as the film progresses, Wade helps Ember to embrace the idea that she should be honest with her parents instead of suffering in silence. Ember’s parents came to Element City for her , not for the shop. And while they would love for her to stay with them and run the shop, what they really want is for Ember to be happy.

Wade and his family just might be the most sympathetic people ever. They constantly shed tears of sorrow and joy for the misfortunes and jubilations of others. They’re also incredibly kind, constantly helping others. (Wade uses his empathic abilities to rally an entire stadium of angry sports fans into cheering for a slumping player whose mother is sick.)

That said, Wade still struggles to understand why Ember feels guilty pursuing her own dreams. But when the time comes, Wade chooses to make a sacrifice of his own, proving that he does understand the value of what Ember’s parents have done for her.

At several critical points in the story, we see characters risk their lives to help others.

Apart from individual characters’ redemptive moments, the story clearly hopes to be a catalyst for a deeper examination of the intertwined subjects of racism and immigration. We see classic immigration tropes, such as an official at an Ellis Island-like receiving station who is unable to spell Bernie and Cinder’s real names, and who then unilaterally changes them. We also see Bernie and Cinder struggle to find housing, with folks slamming doors in their faces without even speaking to them.

Throughout the early part of the film, especially, we see how racial prejudice is at work against the Fire people. For instance, someone assumes Ember grew up speaking the Fire language and inadvertently insults her when he says how well she speaks the common tongue (not realizing she grew up speaking it just like him).

Those aren’t positive things, obviously. The racism that Ember and her family experience is a hard thing for them. But the film itself obviously strives to spotlight how poorly immigrants are sometimes treated and the prejudice they must overcome, which is a redemptive theme.

Spiritual Elements

Ember’s family protects a mystical Blue Flame that Bernie brought with them from Fireland, where he was born. He tells Ember that it holds “all their traditions” and helps them to “burn bright.” And their family often prays to it.

Cinder, Ember’s mom, acts as a sort of fortune teller for romance. She makes couples light wooden sticks and then “reads” the smoke to find out if they’re destined to be. She also appears to be able to smell love on a person.

Ember mentions an “act of God.”

Sexual & romantic Content

Wade’s sister (who is reported to identify as nonbinary) is gay and sits next to her girlfriend at a family dinner. There appear to be other same-sex couples in some scenes who dance and kiss, but it’s difficult to say for certain since these aren’t human characters and because their screen time is typically very brief.

Two Earth people (who look like apple trees) pick each other’s fruit. When someone spots them through an open window, they get embarrassed and say they’re just “pruning.” Later, a couple jokes about whether there will be any “pruning” on their date. A married couple talks about “hanky panky.”

Several couples smooch. Ember is irritated when a guy calls her “hot,” not realizing he meant her temperature, not her appearance.

As mentioned, Ember and Wade gradually kindle an unlikely romance and learn to navigate their “elemental” differences.

Violent Content

Several Water people are accidentally boiled by the heat of a Fire person. One Water guy actually evaporates (though he’s later able to recondense, reviving him). A few Earth people have their leaves burned off by fire, as well. Two Water boys try to make a Fire girl fall into water, asking if she’ll die if she does. (Though it doesn’t appear the boys would have succeeded, their father stops them and embarrassedly apologizes.)

Many Fire people are injured when water hits their various limbs. (Though a few chomps of a fire stick restore their flames.) The entire Fire community flees a flash flood, though it appears none are permanently harmed.

A storm causes significant damage to an island community. An elderly Fire woman passes away in a poof of smoke. People talk about a butterfly getting crushed by a windshield wiper. Ember causes substantial property damage in a few scenes when she literally explodes after losing her temper.

An Earth boy who grows flowers from his armpits often picks these blooms (to his own pain) to gift to girls. A boy hits his uncle with a bat. A man’s hand is accidentally slammed in a door.

Crude or Profane Language

None, but the words “ash” and “fluffing” are substituted for profanities in two scenes. Someone utters the incomplete phrase, “What the—?” We also hear a few uses of “dang” and one “holy dewdrop.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

None, but clips in the credits show Ember’s mom with a cocktail.

Other noteworthy Elements

As noted above, racism in the context of immigration is a big theme here, and we definitely see various characters treated poorly because of their race. Sometimes, they hurl element-based insults at each other.

And those prejudices go both directions, too. Bernie, for example, makes it very clear how much he hates Water people, even going as far as saying they all look alike (yet another racist trope). And when Ember’s grandmother dies, she makes Ember promise to marry a Fire person.

Some Water kids purposely ruin objects for sale in the Fireplace. A Fire customer repeatedly tries to exploit a “Buy one, get one free” sale. Ember loses her temper with multiple customers at the Fireplace. Characters lie. Sports fans insult players and the referee when a game doesn’t go their way. (And the team involved is called the Windbreakers, with their team slogan being “Toot, toot!”) A woman repeatedly tries to sneak past a security guard.

We hear that Bernie’s dad didn’t give Bernie his blessing when Bernie and Cinder went to Element City to build a new life. Wade says he clashed with his dad and never got the chance to make things right before his dad died.

Pixar has long been touted as a company that makes children’s films. However, recent years have shown a drift towards more grown-up themes and storylines. Elemental flows in that stream.

Ember is a Fire girl who always thought she’d grow up to run her family’s shop in Firetown. But after she meets Wade, she realizes she has other dreams and ambitions.

The couple has more than just familial expectations to overcome. “Elements don’t mix,” they’re told. And as a Water guy, Wade represents everything that Ember’s dad hates about Element City’s prejudice against Fire people.

But through empathy, determination, perseverance and love, the couple finds a way not only to save Ember’s family’s store, but to build a new Element City—one that nurtures healthy elemental relations and fosters a thriving community.

Those are terrific, redemptive messages that potentially give families a lot to discuss.

But as we’ve seen so regularly from Disney and Pixar the last few years, families also have visual and verbal references to same-sex couples to contend with as well. And while there’s no crude language, we do hear a couple of substitutions for harsher profanities and some innuendo as well.

These elements, plus the film’s romcom plot, might make Elemental too mature for younger viewers. But the themes we see here are still in line with what Pixar’s been doing for a while now, both in positive ways and in ways that may give some families pause.

Emily Tsiao

Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.

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‘elemental’ review: pixar’s timely high-concept bonanza underwhelms.

Director Peter Sohn ('The Good Dinosaur') tells the story of a fire family immigrating to a metropolis dominated by the opposing element of water, and the romance that ensues.

By Jordan Mintzer

Jordan Mintzer

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Everyone has their favorite Pixar movie — mine is Coco , with Wall-E and Ratatouille very close seconds — and no matter which title you prefer in the game-changing animation studio’s catalogue, almost every one of them feels unique. (The Cars and Toy Story sequels aside, although even some of those were fresh and original).

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Elemental Review

07 Jul 2023

Pixar is a studio with proven form in telling heartfelt, impactful stories through the highest of concepts — a girl transforming into a giant red panda as she reaches puberty ( Turning Red ); an after-life littered with pastel-blue blobs, heading to The Great Beyond on a massive conveyor belt ( Soul ); emotions portrayed as walking, talking entities, battling over their owner’s personality in a big control room (the unmatched Inside Out ). Elemental follows that thread, the characters here all made up of one of the four core elements (fire, air, water, earth), living together in ‘Element City’. Except, they’re not really living together — because of the harm the different elements pose to each other, they simply don’t mix.

The focus is on Ember (voiced by Leah Lewis), a literal hot mess, working hard with her father Bernie (Ronnie Del Carmen) at their family store in Fire Town. Bernie hopes for Ember to take over the business soon, so that he can finally retire, if only she could keep her temperature in check when dealing with customers. Yes, the Fire people are hotheads, Ember hotter than most, and her inability to control her emotions and make deeper connections with people often leads to mini explosions behind the counter. One of these meltdowns brings weepy Water guy Wade (Mamoudou Athie) into the shop, with a mysterious leak spelling potentially fatal trouble for the residents of Fire Town.

Where Elemental really sizzles is in its central pair’s chemistry (literally).

The film opens with Ember’s parents coming to Element City years before she was born. They face their culture and customs being stripped from them, rejection from home after home, and start their own business to build community amongst the Fire people, and give their daughter the life they never had. This is an immigrant tale, moving into broader themes about otherness, integration, prejudice, class and more. Fire people are seen as harmful and dangerous, are turned away from institutions, and are forced to congregate outside the city — which, as Ember says, “isn’t made with Fire people in mind”. The metaphor is as subtle as a sledgehammer, but that’s surely the point — and whilst on-the-nose at times, it’s kind of incredible that Elemental is able to communicate huge societal concepts like these to young audiences through such a clean, easy-to-grasp analogy.

If that all sounds heavy, though, fret not. There’s a ton of fun to be had with the elemental concept — Wade struggling to eat Ember’s native hot food; a sport called airball, with a team named ‘The Wind-Breakers’, plus the slogan “It’s tootin’ time”; Ember’s flames changing hues as she dances across coloured minerals; Wade getting sucked into a sponge as a baby. There are puns galore, the script and production design really making the most of every opportunity for an element-based laugh.

As beautifully rendered as Element City and its residents are, there is a lot going on. Flashbacks, backstory and plot strands are crowbarred in left, right and centre — some pay off wonderfully, most fall by the wayside. Despite being the central characters, the somewhat crude design of Ember and the Fire people feels incongruent against their intricately detailed clothing and surroundings. The dialogue is simplistic; though ‘family-friendly’ is of course Pixar’s bent, Elemental is one that feels particularly for the kids.

Where Elemental really sizzles is in its central pair’s chemistry (literally). Mamoudou Athie uses the full range of that extraordinary voice, evoking hysterics and sincerity with equal ease. He’s matched well by Leah Lewis, and together they provide what feels like Pixar’s first romcom, complete with awkward first dates and meeting the parents, all with an added layer of jeopardy around what would happen if they were to touch. Wade’s emotional depth and Ember’s relatable story make for a strong connection, and, once again, Pixar demonstrates its ability to hit you in the feels.

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‘Elemental’ Review: Pixar’s Latest Offers Mixed Immigrant Metaphors and a Genuine Romance

Siddhant adlakha.

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. Disney releases the film in theaters on Friday, June 16.

Sohn’s last directorial venture, “The Good Dinosaur,” was an unfortunate victim — along with “Soul” and “Toy Story 4” — of the strange Pixar era where environmental realism was the emerging lingua franca. This left cartoonish characters feeling awkward, and visually adrift. However, this time around, “Elemental” is set in Element City, a whole cloth creation that exists outside our reality, with its enormous cloud towers and water-splashing monorails, but one that’s meant to work as a metaphor for the modern United States.

People made of water, trees, clouds, and flame — having immigrated in that order — make up the citizenry of this sprawling, storybook metropolis, but unlike the first three groups, its fire residents have not yet fully integrated or assimilated, owing to the rampant prejudice against them. Granted, this set up presents a bit of an X-Men problem (or, more vitally, a “Zootopia” problem, in which herbivores are prejudiced against carnivores) since the flame people do pose a legitimate danger, but hopefully the four-year-olds in the audience won’t mind.

From the word go, the story of “Elemental” reflects the broad strokes of the American immigrant experience, but it begins to get muddled — slowly at first, and then rather quickly — when it tries to get specific. It pulls details from various real cultures to create its fire community, “the Firish,” born from a mix of minor traditions borrowed from various East Asian, Middle Eastern, and European cultures, and accents that seem to shift between Italian, Hispanic, Iranian, and West Indian at the drop of a hat. The idea may be for immigrant and first generation kids to be able to find some sort of recognition, but the result is del Carmen and Ommi playing an uncomfortable game of ethnic hopscotch with their vocal performances, with practically every line dedicated to some malformed pun unlikely to elicit even chuckle (in Element City, hot dogs are called hot logs, because they’re made of logs).

FUTURE’S SO BRIGHT -- In Disney and Pixar’s “Elemental,” fiery young woman Ember (voice of Leah Lewis) lives with her immigrant parents in Firetown—a borough of Element City, where fire-, water-, land- and air-residents live together. Directed by Peter Sohn (“The Good Dinosaur,” “Party Cloudy” short) and produced by Denise Ream (“The Good Dinosaur,” “Cars 2”), Disney and Pixar’s “Elemental” releases on June 16, 2023. © 2023 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

Her relationship with her father is central; it’s sweet, if sometimes jagged, with the weight of expectation being as much a gift as it is a burden. In his broken English, he calls her his “good daughter,” and she lovingly refers to him as “ashfa” — the honorific for “father” in their language — but Lumen also struggles with a burning temper whose origins she fails to fully recognize, and which manifests as her red-and-yellow flame turning dangerously purple.

The plot is kicked into motion when the store gets accidentally flooded in Bernie’s absence, and Lumen is left to deal city inspector Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie), a sheltered but empathetic and sensitive (to the point of sappy) water-person who decides to help her, if it means keeping her father’s business afloat. This results in a whole lot of half-baked plot being pumped into the movie within very little time — mostly involving a quest to discover a rather mundane leak — but thankfully, its flimsiness ends up a blessing in disguise, since this subplot easily shoved aside when it comes time to let Wade and Ember interact.

Once you get past the movie’s mal-formed mechanics — water people are made of water, but they aren’t water themselves; tree people, similarly, don’t seem to mind people eating “hot logs” — and if you’re ready to take the movie at its word, when it comes to water and fire being equally dangerous to one another, then its story is not entirely untoward. Wade and Ember are reluctant to touch for this reason, but the way they frolic through the city, and soften and strengthen one another, makes for Pixar’s first genuine romance since Carl and Ellie (albeit with slightly happier results than the opening scene of “Up”).

Despite its confused and overstuffed worldbuilding, “Elemental” has enough charming moments to get by, even if its meaning lies less in its ill-conceived immigrant saga, and more in the personal drama that lives a few layers beneath it.

“Elemental” premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. Disney will release it in theaters on Friday, June 16.

Movie review: Pixar’s ‘Elemental’ won’t set the world on fire, but it holds water

This image released by Disney/Pixar Studios shows Ember, voiced by Leah Lewis, in a scene from the animated film “Elemental.” (Disney/Pixar via AP)

This image released by Disney/Pixar Studios shows Clod, voiced by Mason Wertheimer, left, and Ember, voiced by Leah Lewis, in a scene from the animated film “Elemental.” (Disney/Pixar via AP)

This image released by Disney/Pixar Studios shows Ember, voiced by Leah Lewis, left, and Wade, voiced by Mamoudou Athie in a scene from the animated film “Elemental.” (Disney/Pixar via AP)

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Pixar’s “Elemental” conjures a diverse metropolis where the elements — fire, water, earth and air — live like ethnicities mostly ghettoized from one other. For fire and water, especially, mingling can be combustible. A bad splash could consume fire; a strong flame could evaporate water. This is the rare kids’ movie where subway rides are actually more fraught with danger than in the real world.

“Elemental” is the 27th Pixar feature and the second from longtime studio veteran Peter Sohn (“The Good Dinosaur”). But in many ways, it feels like a spiritual sequel to the Disney Animation release “Zootopia,” a likewise gleaming urban tower of anthropomorphized racial metaphors with occasional interactions with municipal bureaucracy.

In “Elemental,” Ember Lumen (voiced by Leah Lewis) is the daughter of immigrants from Fireland: Ernie (Ronnie Del Carmen) and Cinder (Shila Omni), both of whom were handed English names while passing through an Ellis Island-like customs entry.

Like countless real-life immigrants before them, Ernie and Cinder have scraped together a thriving life and business, a bodega of literally hot foods that Ember is expected to inherit. Her temper is a problem. Ember, a red-haired flame capable of going “full purple,” can resemble Lewis Black’s Anger of “Inside Out.” But her more pressing issue is a basement leak out of which flows Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie), a water person and building inspector who immediately spots a few dozen code violations that would shut the place down.

“Elemental” may not be anywhere near top-tier Pixar, but, with water and fire hazards everywhere, it’s certainly an insurance man’s dream.

So where does it slide into the Pixar canon? Probably in the lower half. But “Elemental” — sincere and clever, with a splash of dazzle — comes closer to rekindling some of the old Pixar magic than some recent entries.

Yet the marriage of elemental high concept with a classical immigrant tale never quite achieves alchemy. Aside from a beautiful elevated subway that splashes water below whenever a train glides through, Element City doesn’t come across a fully fleshed-out world. Despite basing the movie in the building blocks of life, there’s little feel for the natural world.

Opening on the heels of raging wildfires, “Elemental” manages to be a movie about fire and water without even a passing reference to today’s climate realities. Missed opportunities abound. Earth and air are relegated to bit players. Not a soul sings “The Eternal Flame.” Earth Wind and Fire go cameo-less.

But if the comic potential of “Elemental” goes untapped, its central story is more convincing and tenderly drawn. Ember, who travels the city with a stylish cloak to keep from igniting things in her path, is one of Pixar’s strongest protagonists. The sacrifice and burden of being a first-generation immigrant daughter is movingly rendered in her.

“Elemental’s” strongest scenes are with Ember and her father as they navigate a familiar crossroads. As responsible as Ember feels to her family, she’s pulled in another direction. Her real talent is glassmaking, which she can exquisitely do in a moment, with a few quick puffs. She’d be a runaway champ on “Blown Away.”

Ember, I think, would have been enough to build a movie around. But that’s not “Elemental,” my dear. Instead, Sohn’s film, scripted by John Hoberg, Kat Likkel and Brenda Hsueh, is too much given over to a “West Side Story”-esque romance between her and Wade as they rush around an Element City that, like “Chinatown,” has a water problem.

As they hurry to plug a mysterious leak, Wade is soon carrying a torch for Ember. The puns fly. “You’re so hot,” he says. “Excuse me?” she replies. “No,” he strutters. “Like smoking.”

It’s a seemingly impossible love story; they fear even touching each other. And they come from much different worlds. Wade, who sort of resembles a watery Colin Jost, lives with his family in a doorman building. But as a match for Ember, he’s a bit of a drip. He gushes tears at the mere mention of butterflies and speaks wide-eyed about “embracing the light.” “Elemental” begins to push against a here-to-unknown threshold: There may be only so far you can take a romance when your leading man is a translucent blob named Wade.

An extra word, though, on the short that precedes “Elemental.” “Carl’s Date” picks back up with Carl Fredricksen and the squirrel-chasing Doug. Here, Carl nervously prepares for his first date since the death of his beloved Ellie. Doug’s advice: “Bring a toy.” It’s both a fitting companion to “Elemental” (the boy from “Up,” Russell, was loosely inspired by Sohn) and poignant swan song for Ed Asner, who recorded his dialogue prior to his death in 2021.

“Elemental,” a Walt Disney Co. release, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association for Rated PG for some peril, thematic elements and brief language. Running time: 103 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

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Elemental isn’t Pixar’s best, but it taps into the studio’s superpower

What it misses on story it makes up for in visual splendor.

by Alissa Wilkinson

An image with creatures representing the four elements, riding a subway-style train.

Not to sound like an old person, but I do miss the Pixar of my youth — the can’t-miss studio that turned out artful, funny movies for kids and adults and had cultural staying power. ( Toy Story was released in 1995, shortly after my 12th birthday, but I wasn’t too grown up to love it when my grandma took me to see it.) A new Pixar movie used to be enough of an event in my life that my husband and I, full-grown adults, felt perfectly comfortable showing up to see Ratatouille unaccompanied by children. Wall-E narrowly missed my Sight & Sound ballot last year.

In 2006, Disney acquired Pixar, and alongside other unfortunate factors, the “can’t-miss” reputation has slowly declined, with relative duds like The Good Dinosaur , the less-than-loved Cars series (at least among the parents of their target audience), and Lightyear (want to feel old? Lightyear came out less than a year ago) tarnishing the shine. Honestly, that’s fine — everyone gets some swings and misses — but Disney for some reason decided to push Pixar’s best recent offering, Turning Red , straight to Disney+ with no theatrical option, probably in a now-cooling enthusiasm about streaming. ( Soul and Luca also went straight to streaming, but at the height of the pandemic, with other concerns at heart.)

Soul is Pixar’s most visually inventive film, and one of its most poignant.

Anyhow, this all brings us to Elemental. For a giant nerd (me), a movie starring the ancient four elements — earth, air, fire, and water — sounded weird and gutsy and great, so hopes ran high. You may be expecting (and I half-expected to be writing) some soliloquy on Plato and Hippocrates and whatever here, but Elemental doesn’t give us that. To the ancients, the elements were a way to explain all of existence by way of four fundamentals, simple substances that would make the complexity of the natural world more legible. For director Peter Sohn, the four elements are really just a way to construct a little imaginative universe in which to play, and I mean, I can’t fault him. No need to drag the Presocratics in to please me .

A fire woman and a water man look pleadingly.

I am a little disappointed, though, by the feeling that Elemental is underdeveloped, both by Pixar story standards and the standards of much less exacting movies. In part, it’s the story of an immigrant family — a fire family, to be specific, the Lumens, who move to the big city in search of a better life for their fire child Ember (Leah Lewis). In this city, water and earth and air live in the shiny fancy central metropolis, while fire people are relegated to an outer borough, away from where they might cause harm. Out there, the Lumens open a shop where they sell snacks and other fire-specific goods. Ember is raised working in the shop, and her parents tell her it will be hers one day.

As she approaches the crest of young adulthood, she meets Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie), a water person who accidentally ends up in the shop through some mishaps, and they fall in love. From there it’s sort of a Romeo and Juliet thing, but there’s also an adventure about saving the shop from getting shut down, and also finding a leak in the town, and also learning to risk love by combining elements and — well, honestly, it gets a little muddled, and I started to lose track of what was going on.

Pixar’s story strength has always been in helping audiences process deeply poignant and melancholy feelings about the world — sadness, loss, the fear of abandonment, even the nature of the soul. These are weighty matters that many contemporary purveyors of entertainment for children skip over (it feels like most other kids’ films are either about “friendship” or “being yourself”). With a story based on the four elements, you could imagine, for instance, an exploration of trying to take the scariest phenomena of the world and injecting them with wonder and awe. In its muddledness, Elemental feints in a few directions — ambivalence about your parents’ goals for you, the experience of second-generation immigrants, prejudice against people who don’t look like you — but nothing quite lands securely because it isn’t thoroughly developed.

Two characters, fire and water, look at one another with a little fear and a little longing.

Yet Elemental isn’t a full failure. It’s an original story, for one, and coming from Disney, that’s no small thing. The best thing about Elemental — and, since movies are a primarily visual medium, it’s a very good thing indeed — is that it looks incredible. The team at Pixar somehow manages to render a realistic-looking flame that’s also clearly a cartoon, somehow a being with emotions ranging from rage to love to fear, while also in the same frame depicting rushing water so realistic-looking that I started to wonder if they’d actually shot real water instead.

The human artists at Pixar are a peak example of what it means for art and technology to combine, and they’ve been generating genuine amazement from their audiences for three decades. What they’re doing, though, isn’t mere spectacle; it’s creating a space for the imagination to play in, finely rendered and detailed. I’ll never forget attending the “ Pixar: 20 Years of Animation ” show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2006 and being transfixed by the artistry on display. Pixar rarely gets gimmicky; instead, they strive to create stories and characters and experiences (emotions, elements, souls, memories) that are best crafted through careful animation.

Which is why I left Elemental with a smile on my face. A film without images (or with bad images you can avoid while staring at your phone) might as well be a long podcast. There’s clearly a tug-of-war going on inside Pixar; I don’t know how it will end. But the expectations they’ve set for several generations of audience members about what a great movie can look like — even a movie, yes, for kids — is priceless, and we’ve been lucky to have them.

Elemental opens in theaters on June 16.

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Trying to bring the high-concept charm of 'Inside Out' to the world of incompatible natural elements, 'The Good Dinosaur' director Peter Sohn's opposites-attract movie is a bit of a misfire.

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I reckon there are more ideas per second of screentime in “ Elemental ” than any other Pixar movie to date. So why does this imagination-teasing opposites-attract rom-com feel like a misfire?

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Naturally, fear of either option poses a problem for lava girl Ember (voiced by Leah Lewis) and her aquatic new acquaintance, Wade (Mamoudou Athie), who meet when a pipe bursts in the basement of her father’s shop. Conventional wisdom says they can’t be together, further complicated by the expectations of Ember’s immigrant parents, Ernie (Ronnie Del Carmen) and Cinder (Shila Ommi), who expect their daughter to take over the family business. As Pixar premises go, this one might read, “What if Fire and Water had feelings … for one another?”

By far the most volatile of the elements, Fire — flickering hot-heads who incinerate practically everything they touch — stays sequestered in the ghetto, where these highly combustible characters can smolder safely. Water tends to prefer the posh high-rises, flowing wherever it pleases. Those characters tend to be more sensitive, crying jets of tears at the slightest provocation. We see less of Earth and Air, who have almost nothing to do. The former look like dung-beetle balls, with stone noses and greenery sprouting from all parts of their brown-dirt bodies. Air people are shaped like cotton-candy clouds and dissipate on contact — close cousins with fluffy gray Gus from Sohn’s 2009 short “Partly Cloudy.”

Best known to Pixar fans as the employee who inspired the Russell character in “Up,” Sohn has a very particular aesthetic, different from the studio’s other directors, that plays funny tricks with characters’ proportions — which is doubly weird when they’re made of fluid, flame or puffs of smoke. It’s often said that Pixar doesn’t have a house style, but there’s a signature touch, evident from the care put into individualizing every background character, that makes “Elemental” instantly recognizable as coming from the studio that made “Inside Out” (where human emotions were the heroes) and “Soul” (in which death was just the beginning).

The project follows in the same abstract conceptual vein as those two films — standouts not only in the Pixar oeuvre, but 21st-century animation overall — though “Elemental” lacks the intuitive story logic that made them such original toons. Maybe it’s because no one thinks of the world in terms of “elements” (any more than they do the body’s “four humors”), the outdated nature of which seems at odds with the cutting-edge city and its computer-generated inhabitants.

For the longest time, Pixar’s formula involved letting directors pick a part of the world that interested them — à la Mexico in “Coco” or France for “Ratatouille” — and then appropriating as much culture as they could into the finished product. That was back when only the original “brain trust” (all white men) got to make features. To balance that out, Pixar has been grooming new voices through its shorts program, encouraging artists of different backgrounds to explore their heritage (as in “Sanjay’s Super Team” and “Bao”).

That mentality extends to the latest wave of Pixar originals (one-offs like “Luca” and “Turning Red,” breaking up a slate thick with sequels), in which the studio wisely encourages those same directors to get personal. This movie is no exception, drawing from Sohn’s second-generation immigrant status. Much of what works about the film is informed by his experience, and that of other Pixar employees.

The element element, on the other hand, corresponds to practically nothing children know or recognize about the natural world. Instead of giving them a deeper understanding of Fire, Water, etc., the over-complicated premise creates all sorts of confusing new rules for kids to learn — rules which don’t really apply outside the film. “Elemental” is so elaborate and calls for so much exposition that the briskly paced movie is still trying to shoehorn essential backstory into the film’s final reel. Sohn should have made the plot simpler, not faster. There’s poetry and soul here, but both are watered down by how much the movie seems to be multitasking. With Pixar, sincerity is elemental. The rest risks distracting from what really matters.

Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (closer), May 25, 2023. MPA Rating: PG. Running time: 103 MIN.

Production: (Animated) A Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures release of a Pixar Animation Studios production. Producer: Denise Ream. Executive producer: Pete Docter.
Crew: Director: Peter Sohn. Screenplay: John Hobert & Kat Likkel, Brenda Hsueh; story: Peter Sohn, John Hobert & Kat Likkel, Brenda Hsueh. Camera: David Juan Bianchi, Jean-Claude Kalache. Editor: Stephen Schaffer. Music: Thomas Newman.
With: Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie, Ronnie del Carmen, Shila Ommi, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Catherine O’Hara, Mason Wertheimer, Joe Pera.

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'Elemental' Review: Disney Pixar Replays Its Greatest Hits in This Formulaic Rom-Com

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This review was originally part of our coverage for the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

It's a story as old as time: two characters from different and opposing cultures become star-crossed lovers and their love helps bridge the gap between people. Elemental is, at its core, a romantic comedy. While Disney Pixar joints have hinted at romance before, this is the first time the storyline has been so overtly romantic. The film follows the characters Ember Lumen ( Leah Lewis ) and Wade Ripple ( Mamoudou Athie ), a fire and water element respectively. After a comedic meet-cute, the two forge out on a mission together to uncover a mystery that is plaguing the fire neighborhood, but what really matters is the bond the two form.

RELATED: ‘Elemental’: 25 Things We Learned About the Pixar Movie During Our Visit

'Elemental' Feels a Bit Too Similar to Another Disney Movie

There's nothing particularly awful about Elemental . It's beautifully animated, has a fantastic soundtrack courtesy of Thomas Newman , and the story is a heartwarming one about love, growth, and acceptance. However, there's also nothing particularly amazing about Elemental either. Set in a world where the elements of fire, water, earth, and air live together, the us versus them mentality of the other elements' prejudice against fire feels very familiar.

In fact, a lot of aspects of Elemental feel familiar to a certain other Disney film: Zootopia . From the fantasy world that personifies animals (in Elemental 's case its elements) to the opposites attract dynamic between the leads, it's difficult not to draw direct comparisons to Disney's 2016 hit film. Sprawling shots of the cities make the two universes feel artistically linked. There's even a scene where Wade and Ember try to get information from a slow-moving earth element that works at Wade's office named Fern ( Joe Pera ). The slow-talking Fern feels distinctly similar to Zootopia 's Flash ( Raymond S. Persi ), the "fastest" sloth working at the DMV.

The Use of the Immigrant Story Feels Overly Exaggerated

Mamoudou Athie as Wade, Leah Lewis as Ember, and Catherine O'Hara as Brook in Elemental.

Conceptually, it makes sense that the two stories will share some similarities, but Elemental also feels very formulaic when looking closer at the story. Director Peter Sohn said that they drew inspiration from rom-coms like Moonstruck and You've Got Mail , and it's easy to see that. There won't be any big shocks when it comes to the romance between Wade and Ember and the film often leans into the stereotypes of the genre rather than away from them.

Ember's family immigrated from the fire land to start a new life, and her parents Bernie ( Ronnie del Carmen ) and Cinder ( Shila Ommi ) feel like the cookie-cutter immigrant story. Of course, that's not to say that there is actually just one singular immigrant story as every person who immigrates has their own experience. But Elemental leans heavily into the not-so-subtle metaphor of the fire elements being the othered group of people in the city. They experience extreme discrimination as fire elements, they're sectioned into their own enclave in the city, and they even speak their own language.

It's obvious that Sohn and perhaps some of the other writers have an attachment to the immigrant story, and that's understandable. I was also raised by immigrants parents who came to the United States with little to nothing and had to work hard from the ground up, sacrificing along the way just so that I could have the life they never had. But, this is a familiar story that Elemental handles in a clumsy and ham-fisted way. Narratives about identity are important, but Elemental lacks the delicate nuance needed to tell these stories.

'Elemental' Is Visually Beautiful but Colors Inside the Lines

Leah Lewis as Ember and Mamoudou Athie as Wade in Elemental.

Story aside, there is no doubt that the animators have done a fantastic job when it comes to the animation of Elemental . The character design is fittingly adorable and unique. Watching the elements interact and use their elemental abilities to shape the land, specifically Ember's use of sand to create glass sculptures, is mesmerizing.

Scenes where we see Ember and Wade exploring a flooded tunnel or watch as Ember's flame changes color when she touches mineral rocks are pieces of art, especially when coupled with Newman's score. In many ways, it's a pity that the story is not as strong as the animation. The film's inability to color outside the lines makes a story that is undeniably endearing feel underwhelming, neither unique nor original.

Elemental is in theaters starting June 16.

Movie Reviews

Elemental Is a Solid Pixar Romp And The Best All-Ages Summer Movie Of 2023

Is it a classic Pixar film? Maybe not. But that’s not the point.

The summer of 2023 is clearly, the first summer since 2020 in which taking kids to an actual movie theater is very much back . The Super Mario Bros. Movie was huge ( regardless of reviews! ), Across the Spider-Verse is correctly slaying a the box office, The Little Mermaid remake is doing great, and now, Pixar is back, too. For families looking for summer movies with popcorn, soda, and everything else, things haven’t been this good in a while. And yet, among all these choices, Elemental — that aforementioned new Pixar effort — is perhaps the best choice for the very little ones. Although this new Pixar film may not be the best movie of the summer, it's certainly the most ideal one for all ages.

Elemental , fits right into the pattern of Pixar’s historical ambition with its wholly invented world and exploration of everything from star-crossed romances to the immigrant experience. To be clear, that's not enough to push the movie into masterpiece territory alongside Pixar icons like Finding Nemo , WALL-E , or Up . For all its creativity and effort, Elemental feels like a film that never fully comes together, a movie that juggles too much to ever keep it all in the air. But that’s the perspective of an adult talking about Pixar movies as art.

No middling critical review of Elemental should stop families from seeing it. Despite moments when it falters, there's still something immediately and deeply endearing about this film, particularly in the context of going to watch it with your family. It might not be a masterpiece, but Elemental will still be a great time for you and the kids at the movies.

That all starts, probably not surprisingly, with the way it looks. Director Peter Sohn and his team of artists dig deep for their depiction of Element City, an incredible place where people of Water, Air, Earth, and Fire all live, even if the Fire people get short shrift and have to make do with their only little insular neighborhood. Even if they can't fully grasp the many layers of plot at work here, the younger kids in your life will get lost in this colorful, vibrant world where trains glide on water, apartments become wading pools, and the sport of "Air Ball" is played to raucous crowds in a massive, unconventional stadium. It's all wonderfully inventive, and it holds the eye throughout the film.

This isn't to say the film's inventiveness and charm only exist on a macro scale. Look closer at the character work, and you'll find plenty of engrossing stuff, particularly when it comes to the film's efforts to dig deeper into the way that Fire woman Ember Lumen (Leah Lewis) and her parents live. The Lumens run a business, a kind of all-encompassing bodega for Fire people, and that business is packed with clever nods to the way a being made entirely of fire might live. We learn about the snacks they eat, the tools they use, and the traditions they hold dear, and it's there that the bigger kids in the family will start to latch on not just to the jokes, but to the bigger ideas at work in the story.

And while they sometimes spend a little too much time jockeying for attention, those big ideas are all definitely worthwhile. It begins with the film's focus on a family of immigrants. The Lumen family is not native to Element City, and when they get there, they find that the other Element "races" are not necessarily welcoming. Fire has a stigma, you see, and so most of the Fire people in the city keep to themselves and develop their own prejudices, particularly against Water people and their ability to extinguish everything the Fire families have worked for. That means that when Wade (Mamoudou Athie), a local Water guy and inspector for the city, first comes into contact with Ember, she's not all that happy to have him around.

Ember is having the ride of her life.

Of course, as the trailers show, that eventually changes, and Ember starts to both question the barriers that have existed her entire life and ponder her place in the wider Element world. Ember's eventual exploration of life outside her little family bubble is another meaty piece of the Elemental puzzle, and older children will certainly relate to her search for meaning and purpose beyond what she knew growing up.

Then there are the other, tried-and-true Pixar ideas that parents will recognize: Kids learning to exist independently of parents, near-fatal experiences, how to cope with a rapidly changing world, and how to overcome self-doubt to reach your potential. It's all there, even if it gets a bit jumbled sometimes, and it arrives in a fairly light, bright package, without some of the more overt darkness that launched Pixar films like Finding Nemo and Up .

That means that, despite its shortcomings, Elemental is the kind of film you can feel good about experiencing with your family, and beaming onto the TV for the kids when it hits streaming. It might not be the most memorable Pixar experience ever, but everyone, from little kids to their parents, will still come away with something rewarding.

Elemental is out in theaters now.

Screen Rant

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Pixar’s Elemental focuses on the residents of Elemental City, who are all made of land, air, water, or fire. Originally thinking that elements can’t mix thanks to her father, Ember Lumen (Leah Lewis) sets out on a journey with Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie) to see the world in a whole new light. Also starring is Catherine O’Hara as Brook Ripple, Wade’s mother, and Ronnie del Carmen as Bernie, Ember’s father.

Your Rating

Reviews (3).

Elemental is not one of the best Disney movies I've ever seen, but it is definitely a good one. It boasts beautiful and brightly colored animation and some pivotal lessons about both accepting others and accepting yourself.

Genuinely love this film so much. Personally think it might be one of Pixar's best films ever. Just connected with the characters on that level. Gorgeous to look at as well. I would love to see a sequel to this one. Really happy it crawled its way into success after starting off so poorly. Deserves so much more. Really really love it.

While Elemental doesn't have the strongest story, both in and out of its romance plotline, the two leads have great chemistry with one another, and the narrative of immigration, race relations, and living for yourself vs. living for others makes for stellar drama from start to finish. Add in its gorgeous visuals and animation, and it's easy to see why perception on the film was so quick to turn around.

Mamoudou Athie

Catherine o'hara, ronnie del carmen, wendi mclendon-covey, seasons (4).

Season 1 (2016)

Season 2 (2018), season 3 (2022), season 4 (2026), screenrant reviews, elemental review: vibrant animation & interesting ideas clash with weak story.

In reality, Elemental is bursting with clever ideas and timely social commentary, but ultimately passes over both for a more conventional tale.

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Elemental movie review & film summary (2023)
Elemental. At its best, Pixar is unbeatable, making clever, charming, and brightly original films to touch the heart and spark the imagination. And so it's been dispiriting to see the animation studio behind such emotive triumphs as " Toy Story," " Ratatouille," " Up," and " Inside Out "—among the best films of their ...
Elemental (2023)
Disney and Pixar's "Elemental," an all-new, original feature film set in Element City, where fire-, water-, land- and air-residents live together. The story introduces Ember, a tough, quick-witted ...
'Elemental' Review: Sparks Fly
The latest movie from Disney/Pixar tucks a romantic comedy inside a high-concept premise. It's smoldering and splashy.
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Following the familiar "Romeo and Juliet" template, the latest movie from Pixar Animation puts a new spin on a tale of opposites attracting.
Elemental Movie Review
Heartfelt, romantic fable about immigrant experience. Read Common Sense Media's Elemental review, age rating, and parents guide.
Elemental (2023)
Elemental: Directed by Peter Sohn. With Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie, Ronnie Del Carmen, Shila Ommi. Follows Ember and Wade, in a city where fire-, water-, earth- and air-residents live together.
Elemental
Set in Element City, where fire-, water-, land- and air-residents live together, Elemental introduces Ember, a tough, quick-witted and fiery young woman, whose friendship with a fun, sappy, go-with-the-flow guy named Wade challenges her beliefs about the world they live in.
Elemental
Elemental flows in that stream. Ember is a Fire girl who always thought she'd grow up to run her family's shop in Firetown. But after she meets Wade, she realizes she has other dreams and ambitions. The couple has more than just familial expectations to overcome. "Elements don't mix," they're told.
'Elemental' Review: A Timely But Underwhelming Pixar Entry
Director Peter Sohn ('The Good Dinosaur') tells the story of a fire family immigrating to a metropolis dominated by the opposing element of water, and the romance that ensues.
Elemental
Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Sep 26, 2023. Elemental is a marvel of layered animation techniques that float through that uncanny valley between 2D and 3D. It's hard to discern the ...
Elemental
Elemental stands out from the perpetual flow of eco-documentaries by at least glancing at some of the personal issues and professional setbacks faced by the activists it portrays.
Elemental
Published on 05 07 2023. Release Date: 07 Jul 2023. Original Title: Elemental. Pixar is a studio with proven form in telling heartfelt, impactful stories through the highest of concepts — a girl ...
'Elemental' brings fire and water together in a romance that ...
Pixar movies have seldom suffered from a lack of ambition, but that's still the defining characteristic of "Elemental," which mixes a tender opposite-side-of-matter romance with an immigrant ...
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'Elemental' Review: A Pixar film that explores the challenges and joys of immigrant life, music, and love, with stunning animation and sound.
Movie review: Pixar's 'Elemental' won't set the world on fire, but it
Pixar's "Elemental" conjures a diverse metropolis where the elements — fire, water, earth and air — live like ethnicities mostly ghettoized from one other.
Review: Pixar's Elemental muddles its story, but it looks amazing
Disney / Pixar. Yet Elemental isn't a full failure. It's an original story, for one, and coming from Disney, that's no small thing. The best thing about Elemental — and, since movies are a ...
'Elemental' Review: Pixar's Overcomplicated Rom-Com
Trying to bring the high-concept charm of 'Inside Out' to the world of incompatible natural elements, Pixar's 'Elemental' is a bit of a misfire.
Elemental Review
Visually, Pixar is in absolutely top form with Elemental. Unfortunately, the story is way too thin and none of it makes any sense.
'Elemental' review: A fiery immigration narrative and a rom-com collide
Pixar's "Elemental" is the sweet, but crowded story of a fire-person and a water-person falling in love in Element City.
'Elemental' Review: Disney Pixar Film Is a Formulaic Rom-Com
The new Disney Pixar film, Elemental, has great animation though is far too derivative of superior works like Zootopia. Read on for our review.
'Elemental' movie review: Disney Pixar's ambitious rom-com falls short
Pixar tries an ambitious blend of romantic comedy and immigrant story, and the results are mixed in the vibrant and metaphor-laden 'Elemental.'
'Elemental' Is a Solid Pixar Romp And The Best All-Ages Summer Movie Of
Elemental, fits right into the pattern of Pixar's historical ambition with its wholly invented world and exploration of everything from star-crossed romances to the immigrant experience. To be clear, that's not enough to push the movie into masterpiece territory alongside Pixar icons like Finding Nemo, WALL-E, or Up. For all its creativity and effort, Elemental feels like a film that never ...
Elemental Summary, Trailer, Cast, and More
Pixar's Elemental focuses on the residents of Elemental City, who are all made of land, air, water, or fire. Originally thinking that elements can't mix thanks to her father, Ember Lumen (Leah Lewis) sets out on a journey with Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie) to see the world in a whole new light. Also starring is Catherine O'Hara as Brook Ripple, Wade's mother, and Ronnie del Carmen as ...

Isaac Feldberg

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