Elemental

Grade: A-

Pixar has pretty much exhausted all their ideas for movies about inanimate objects that talk – though I’m still holding out for Toilets one day. Can you imagine? “You ok, John? You look a little flushed.” Randy Newman could write a song for it. But at the moment, they are featuring earth, wind, fire, and water with Elemental. Though they all live close by, they stay in their territories and don’t intermingle. It is another home run for Pixar, on the same level as Onward, Soul, Coco, and Inside Out, but not quite the equals of Toy Story 4 or especially Turning Red. It’s a visually dazzling sweet love story, and a surprising tear-jerker.

Element-related puns abound throughout the movie. In the sports arena during an Airball game played by the wind characters, the water spectators do the wave – literally. And the fire family get off a few good ones: “get up off your ash” and “winner winner, charcoal dinner.” Our main protagonists here are a family of fire: Bernie and Cinder, and their daughter Ember. They single-handedly built and run a successful, thriving convenience store in fire town, which Bernie plans to transfer ownership to Ember when he retires and “she’s ready.”

There’s a leak in the basement, where in flows Wade Ripple, a water person. He discovers that their store isn’t up to code, and has to submit several violation citations. After that MacGuffin is out of the way, the movie has room to breathe and observe an unlikely romance kindling, or bubbling up between Ember and Wade. She’s so hot, he says. Nobody has made him boil like that before.

The movie cleverly utilizes its voice talent. I’ve grown weary of animated films where the actor providing the voice is just playing their usual type. Need a dopey, shy, awkward nice guy? Here’s Owen Wilson! Looking for someone to be a rat-a-tat, bookwormy Rain Man type bird? Here’s Jesse Eisenberg! Since you can’t SEE these actors, why not be creative and let ‘em show some range? The performances in Elemental had me guessing, and often being wrong about what they look like in real life.

An informative, moving, amusing epilogue is provided to us during the end credits, via a series of still drawings. The film was already great, but it had even more gift to give us. I thought that after the streak they’ve had, we were almost due for a sub-par hiccup, but Elemental is yet another fun, infectious triumph for Pixar that I fell in love with. You can learn from it.

Grade: A-