Hey there film fans, it’s Slick Dungeon! I’m back to review another Oscar nominated film. This time I’ll be reviewing the latest entry from powerhouse animation studio Disney/Pixar, Elemental. The film is about a hotheaded element who meets an element fluid enough to go with the flow. Be forewarned there will be spoilers below so if that sort of thing bothers you, watch the movie and then come on back here to read the review.

What’s it about?

While on the surface this is basically a rom-com with most of the trappings you find in that genre, at its core, Elemental is about the immigrant experience. There is a big city where most elements live called Element City. This city has lots of air, earth, and water elements. More rare are fire elements.

Two such elements are Bernie and Cindie Ember. They immigrate to Element City with their daughter Ember and set up a shop called The Fireplace. With them, they also bring their blue flame which represents their traditions and culture.

Things seem to go relatively well at first. Bernie is successful at his business and he promises the store to his daughter once she is ready. Bernie does seem to have a serious dislike for all water elements. And while Ember is good at most things in the store, she does have a tendency to lose her temper at customers. Also, in general, the community is not entirely accepting of fire elements because, well, they can catch things on fire, and that would be bad.

We jump ahead a few years and Ember is grown up. She’s still helping her father with the store most days but he is near retirement. Ember has one last thing to do to prove herself. She has to get through the red dot sale day without losing her temper. The sale starts and things go okay at first but customers are customers and soon Ember heads down to the basement to let off some steam. She heats up and soon a pipe in the shop bursts. It looks like Ember has ruined the day.

But then, a city inspector comes out of the pipe. This is Wade Ripple who is a water element. He is horrified at the state of the shop but sympathizes with Ember. Still, he has to do his job and he writes up some citations that could get the shop closed down.

Ember does everything she can to convince Wade to ditch the citations but she’s too late and it’s out of his hands. But he is again sympathetic to her situation and allows her to meet some of the higher ups who could reverse the ruling.

In the process of all this, Ember ends up lying to her father about what happened to the shop. Wade and Ember also discover that the real problem has to do with the gate of the city.

As you can guess, in any rom-com, the lies pile up, the romance heats up, and it all comes to a head in a disastrous situation. But, in the end, things work out. Ember and her father are still on good terms even though she has decided not to run the family store and even though she is dating a water element.

The Animation

As with any Pixar film, the animation here is incredibly good. The design of the elements themselves is fun and enjoyable and the backgrounds make an entirely fictional setting look basically real.

This type of skill is what has won Pixar plenty of Oscars in the past but I would not say this film is breaking any new ground in animation here. While the style is good and it matches the story well, there isn’t anything we haven’t seen before visually. That’s not to say it is not an impressive feat. To still be this good at making an animated story work is saying something in and of itself. Pixar has nothing to be ashamed about in this film and I am not sure why it didn’t catch on with audiences so well. I think perhaps the marketing is to blame but if you have not seen it, this is worth a watch for the visual experience alone.

The Voice Acting

As far as the voice acting talent goes in this film, it is spot on and perfectly cast. All of the characters sound like you would expect them to and this, combined with the great animation makes for a very engaging viewing experience.

In conclusion

While the animation is great and the story is solid, in a lot of ways this film feels too conventional. It is nice to see the immigrant experience depicted in animation and I think that will resonate with a lot of audiences. The love story is fairly standard and ends the way you most likely guessed it would end. However, the film doesn’t quite push enough envelopes to make it stand out over other Pixar films. It is undoubtedly one of the best animated films of the year but I don’t think it is, in fact, the best one.

As far as whether this film will win an Oscar, my prediction is it is between Elemental and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Either one could win but my money is on Spider-Man. (Please don’t bet on anything based on my predictions because I am often wrong.)

Elementally yours,

Slick Dungeon