Elemental

There are four classical elements of nature. Air, earth, fire, water. That's by some schemes anyway, but it'll do. All of them are represented here, to mixed effect. There are an infinite number of arguments as to the primary elements of film. Most of them are represented here too, and also to mixed effect.

Ember (Leah Lewis) is born to a family living in Element City, her parents Bernie (Ronnie Del Carmen) and Cinder (Shila Ommi) early arrivals in what's implied to be a fourth wave of immigration. In Firetown their grate is laid, a shop a spark to community through trade. I rhyme there as much from playful desire as to lead me to the film's lack of songs. I can't fairly complain that a film doesn't do something, but it is odd that a story that relies on separation and synthesis doesn't make use of a core feature of Disney animation.

Instead we get a 'crowd-remix' of Kernkraft 400. That track (from 1999) is itself a remix, of a track from 1984 video game Lazy Jones. Adding to the recursion, that multi-platform title is a collection of mini-games, many based on or outright copies of earlier titles. Similarly Elemental owes debts to earlier animated features like Zootropolis, Inside Out, and Turning Red. There's a non-zero chance that grandparents in the audience will be younger than the roots of some of the musical cues but it's almost guaranteed that anyone would recognise artefacts of generational copying.

Directed by Peter Sohn, who last helmed 2015's The Good Dinosaur, it's as competently executed as one would hope for a feature from Pixar. That might seem faint praise, but that's all Elemental deserves. A début feature for John Hoberg and Kat Likkel, their numerous television credits are potentially less interesting than that the couple have 14 children. They write with Brenda Hsueh (another début) and among the dedications is evidence that elements of this story are indebted to her family's experience.

Element City isn't Manhattan, but shots from Firetown across the bridge do recall those from the Five Points in the aftermath of Gangs Of New York. Animation has at least twice gone to a similar well in An American Tale and its sequel Feivel Goes West. Elemental seems intent on distilling complex narratives of integration (and prejudice) into something that's less pure than bland.

Putting a dampener on proceedings before things get steamy is water-y bureaucrat Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie). By now the naming conventions should be clear, though there are some exceptions. A pair of watery weans are named for a popular American swimming pool game and Harold is derived from 'army ruler'. He's a city inspector, part of worldbuilding that seems more intent on vibes than anything approaching cohesiveness. That'd be excusable if one didn't find oneself drifting away from rather than along with the plot.

Elemental is a children's animated film whose main beats are those of an inter-racial romantic comedy, grounded in an immigrant experience and heavily reliant on mourning, generational trauma, and 'jokes' like "I don't want to put you out." It's got too many things going on and in the process it goes wrong.

There's some lovely bits of design including the 'Wetro', but as with Who Framed Roger Rabbit? anything that passes for physics is filtered through the rule of funny. The boundaries of the communities are at once solid and blurry, the 'earth' people are usually bursting with flora and the variety of materials required would test even The Incredibles' Edna Mode. The stylised versions in the credits are a neat touch, but there's a further weird recursion in the "matchbook cars." The brand (now owned by Mattel) got its name from Lesney's tiny vehicles being packaged in similarly sized boxes. That's potentially more confusing than the lack of a tartan on the 'Scorch' tape, not least as a "kiss me I'm Firish" t-shirt suggests their ancestral highlands could be as much Hoots Mon as Hmong.

The similarities to New York and to the unfairnesses of planning towards minority communities reminded me of Robert Moses. That's not because there's a parting of the seas, but because of the ways that the city entrenches inequalities, almost literally. An allegorical dam is a consequence of neglect, but of various kinds and by various people. The kinds of territories that Elemental is alluding to are all weightier than it intends, but it's not light enough to carry them either. It's not only that it's not a winning formula, its chemistry is such that no matter how many sparks there are on screen it fizzles out.