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No, this is not a racism story nor a Zootopia/Inside Out rip off. This is a coming of age immigration story about the romance between two unlikely elements. Now yes, the immigration story does include the parent-child conflict story, but it actually does something interesting and compelling with it. Instead of the child just wanting to follow their own dreams, it's the child realizing that something that they wanted to do might not be right for them and instead of the child actively rebelling against the parent, it's the child sacrificing their happiness for their parents, both things are something we rarely see in coming of age stories. The forbidden love aspect also does some interesting things, instead of a typical Romeo and Juliet story about society antagonizing the couple for societal reasons, it's about society antagonizing the couple because of how harmful they could be for each other. The clash between fire and water provides for both funny and serious moments.
Unfortunately, the story falls short during the third act.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Yes, the film had that "I like the word moist, okay" scene, except the roles are reversed and it was about the character wanting to follow the dreams of their parents rather than for themselves. Yes, it was not good. The breakup happened way too fast because of that one big blowout between them and instead of patching things up or trying to understand Ember, Wade just crashes her party telling her that she doesn't have to follow her dreams. Excuse me, Wade, did you forget that Ember doesn't want to work at the shop because she can't keep her temper in check, which she's been getting better at doing? You're a water type, you should understand this. Yeah, Wade wasn't a very good character in my opinion.
The film also pulls the Disney Death trope so yeah, no Pixar emotional impact there. And the resolution for the conflict the film had with both the forbidden romance story and to a lesser extent, the parental conflict story were pretty forced. Like for no reason, Ember and Wade can finally touch each other. The parental conflict story also ended shallowly in my opinion. Like the parents tell Ember that they their goal wasn't to force her to work in the shop? But wasn't that what they were doing all this time? I felt like there should've been a deeper moment between those two. And instead of focusing on all this forced melodrama, maybe focus more on how Ember is going to resolve the conflict with working in the shop and what she really wants to do and focus on how Ember and Wade are going to co-exist peacefully despite their elemental clashes.
Characters
This is where the film falls a little bit short for me. Like I said, Ember and her parents have a good coming of age-forbidden love story. But Wade, I just didn't care for. He just seemed like an impulsive, selfish dumbass, which, I get it, he's a water type, but outside of his romance with Ember, he really didn't have anything interesting to do. Except for the Crying Game scene, that's a neat concept and some of the funny scenes like eating hot rocks. But the first scene literally had him fighting with Ember because he, for some reason, wanted to nitpick her workplace. He also has a very small element (no pun intended) where he has a dead father for some reason that he never patched things up with, I don't feel like it was necessary to the story, but it's a small moment, so whatever. Like I said in the story section, they could've done better with him. Clod and his interactions with Ember are, yes, as obnoxious as the trailers made. Good things he's only in two scenes. The pink thundercloud, I forgot her name, another minor character, she was a bit of a jerkass, that's all I got to say. And there's another character who functions like the sloths in Zootopia, also nothing special. I would've liked to see a bit more worldbuilding with the other elements, like how do the Air and Earth elements act? They have a lot of neat details with them in the worldbuilding. Maybe we could get shorts about them.
Animation
As usual with Pixar, the world is pretty. The gags are funny. The character designs... eh... maybe not the most appealing as we saw from the trailers, but they're not awful like people make them out to be. I think they fit the characters well. That's all I got to say. Remember, I focus more on writing than I do the technical stuff, unless I notice something remarkable about them. I'm not a sound or art kind of gal.
Overall
Elemental gets 6.9 bells out of 10.
I'd recommend this film. It's more creative than the trailers made it out to be, it's not a racism story, and it's hardly anything like Zootopia or Inside Out. But don't go in expecting a groundbreaking story or peak Pixar. Think of it like a decent Dreamworks film, creative and cute, but predictable in some places. It's definitely better than most of Pixar's output in the 2010s.
As for Carl's Date... Uh... it's stupid. Probably the worst Pixar short or theatrical short I've ever seen. I haven't seen Up in forever, but the characters feel off to me, like they act more silly and childish than I remember. They even use a couple potty jokes in there, like what the heck, Pixar? It does have some funny things in there with Dug and Carl pretending to date and Dug offering tips from a dog's perspective, but other than that and the emotional moment at the end, there's nothing memorable about the short. It was so bad that I even forgot to review it, lol. So yeah, 4.1 bells out of 10
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