A Review

Pixar's latest "Elemental" is a movie I adored for its animation, but left me feeling mixed elsewhere. The character and world designs are pristine and inspired, and are a treat to look at throughout, but by the end I got the feeling that it's a little less than the sum of its glimmering parts.

This is an animated movie with lots of big ideas, and an even bigger heart, but it never picks out a main one making the whole thing feel unfocused and tedious. It's sort of a thematic collage that includes family, responsibility, values, identity, and self-worth, all of which tend to exist independently and never fully come together. How ironic a story about elements afraid to mix has themes that never do.

The theme most closest to the center is probably the underlying distrust that exists between the different elements in this fictional society, replicating a fear of otherism that exists here in our real one. This is not an uninteresting premise, but Disney seems to have forgotten that it already made an opposites-attract adventure comedy that also worked as an allegory on prejudice called "Zootopia," and that movie I think was a lot more fleshed out than this one. There's also numerous characteristics highlighting the immigrant experience, but that too feels like something I've seen done before and more authentically in the form of Don Bluth's "An American Tail."

Like almost all minor Pixar efforts, "Elemental" is not without some solid moments. The visuals have no flaws in detail. But as a story, I don't see myself revisiting this one the way I do the studio's brightest gems with similar high-concepts like "Monsters Inc," "Toy Story," and my personal favorite, "WALL-E."