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ELEMENTAL ★★½
(PG) 109 minutes
Fire and water have long been considered two of the greatest challenges for computer animation. So it makes some kind of sense that the show-offs at Pixar would dream up Elemental, a Romeo and Juliet story where the opposites who attract are Ember Lumen (voiced by Leah Lewis), a fire sprite wreathed in flickering flame, and Wade Ripple (Mamondou Athie), a water boy whose body sloshes as if he could barely contain himself.
Firey Ember (voiced by Leah Lewis) and watery Wade (Mamoudou Athie) are opposites attracted to each other in Elemental.
These two make their home in Element City, a parallel New York where the phenomenally diverse population also includes air people who resemble clouds of fairy floss and earth people with foliage sprouting from their heads.
It’s a magical, enticing place, with wind turbines and water walls, towers glittering like diamonds or wreathed in vines. But it’s no paradise, especially not for the fire people, who are largely confined to the immigrant ghetto of Firetown, where Ember’s dad Bernie (Ronnie del Carmen) runs an iron-and-terracotta grocery known as the Fireplace, which he hopes she’ll one day take over.
With a fantasy like this, the first rule for the viewer is to avoid thinking about it too hard. But it’s not as if director Peter Sohn and his team haven’t done plenty of overthinking of their own, without managing to resolve some of the evident contradictions in their premise.
After all, on the literal level, fire and water genuinely aren’t that compatible – so the taboo against Ember and Wade getting together seems less irrational prejudice than common sense.
Complicating things further, fire and water are also used in the traditional manner to symbolise contrasting temperaments: Ember is a hothead, Wade a weepy guy who goes with the flow, traits that appear to be universal within their respective cultures.
It’s a muddle, frankly, and the beauty of the animation can’t wholly compensate, especially given the mostly witless dialogue and the fact the traditional Pixar ease with plot construction seems to have evaporated (like a few animated blockbusters of late, this one could really use a good old-fashioned villain).
The core problem is that the ground rules of the fantasy are never established, as they need to be if we’re going to invest in it for almost two hours. How taboo is it, exactly, for different elements to fall in love? From what we’re shown directly, we might suppose it’s never happened before – but when Wade brings Ember to dinner, his family are full of patronising but genuine goodwill.
Towards the end, I started to wonder: could it be at the deepest level Elemental isn’t really about race at all, but is using this overtly proclaimed theme as a cover for anxieties about sex, and the whole idea of two people making physical contact?
If so, the fumbled, tentative quality of the storytelling is easier to understand, given this is first and foremost a film for kids. By Pixar standards, at any rate, Ember and Wade’s final clinch may be as steamy as it gets.
Elemental is in cinemas from June 15.
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