Elemental

With the exception of last year’s underrated Lightyear, Pixar has produced solely original works since 2019’s Toy Story 4. While that streak has resulted in such gems as Soul, Onward, and Turning Red, the lows of Luca and now Elemental suggest that revisiting existing properties a bit more frequently might not be such a bad idea.

Visually imaginative and featuring a cute story with fairly strong immigrant and interracial relationship metaphors, director Peter Sohn’s follow-up to The Good Dinosaur doesn’t come close to usurping that 2015 dud as the studio’s worst film, but it doesn’t exactly challenge Inside Out for the top spot, either.

Nevertheless, the film’s central concept of an NYC-like metropolis where anthropomorphic entities made of water, fire, wind, or earth — but, to Captain Planet fans’ dismay, no heart — commingle holds plentiful potential, yet the script by John Hoberg, Brenda Hsueh, and Kat Likkel fails to establish compelling stakes.

At the core of the measly conflict is hot-tempered young fire Ember (voiced by Leah Lewis, Nancy Drew), who tries to prevent the city from shutting down her father’s shop due to structural damage she accidentally inflicted. With help from accident-prone water Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie, Jurassic World Dominion), she strikes a deal with his boss Gale (Wendi McLendon-Covey) to help fix a leaky barrier down by the river, thereby ensuring the survival of the family business that she doesn’t even want to inherit.

That’s pretty much it, and in hitting those key plot points the film’s narrative shifts occur shockingly fast as issues arise and problems are solved in a flash. With all its messaging of Haves and Have Nots, Elemental hints at a bigger mystery afoot concerning the water getting into Firetown — potentially even a Chinatown-esque conspiracy by nefarious, racist forces to wipe out the neighborhood — but the writing team does nothing with these juicy possibilities.

Still, there’s plenty of humor in play, namely some quality juvenile fart jokes concerning the wind sports teams and the weird charms of the Ripple family’s penchant for crying and sharing emotions. But some good jokes and pretty imagery aren’t enough to overcome the flat storytelling, leaving Sohn’s film in the bottom tier of Pixar’s catalog.

Grade: B-minus. Rated PG. Now playing at AMC River Hills 10, Carolina Cinemark, and Regal Biltmore Grande.

(Photo: Disney/Pixar)