The Fundamental Things Apply in Pixar’s Dazzling Romantic Comedy, ‘Elemental’

A Pixar movie is always fundamentally one thing: high-concept. Childrens’ toys that come to life in a world of their own. The inner workings of the human psyche — and the human soul. A world where monsters are normal and little human children are scary, and another where fabulous mythological creatures enjoy a placid suburban existence. The ups and downs of a typical middle-class American family who happen to be superheroes. A robot in post-apocalyptic earth who connects with humanity’s past via show tunes, a rat who becomes a master chef in a human world, a boy who journeys to the land of the dead and back again. The mundane becomes the fantastic and vice-versa. The secret lives of cars, fish, bugs. So what you expect to see from Pixar is primarily the concept, and that idea itself is an extension of the anthology storytelling that Walt Disney pioneered in the 1930s with his animated series of “Silly Symphonies” — tales set in unique lands inhabited by anthropomorphic musical instruments or pastries or, at the very least, talking animals.If you’ve seen the trailer, you know that “Elemental” takes place in a universe both metaphorical and metaphysical, where everyone is one of the basic four elements: fire, water, air (gas), or earth. They all live at Element City, a place where individuals of different elemental properties can mix and mingle and work together. Like all Pixar premises, that concept immediately lends itself to fairly astonishing visuals: water people, fire folk, denizens of the land, traveling across the city in a monorail-style mass transit system, work in offices and shops, visit museums and stores, but, apparently, rarely connect with those of a different elemental group beyond a superficial level.If that’s the concept, there are two other tropes that are brought in to form the outline of the plot: this is a romantic comedy-drama, about two main characters who are as different from each other as fire and water — Ember and Wade. The crew of screenwriters crammed the proceedings with as many visual and verbal puns as possible. Ember literally has a fiery temper that she is constantly trying to keep in control; Wade and the rest of his liquid family are easily moved to tears and constantly, as the saying goes, turning on the waterworks. Ember’s family feeds on fuel for the fire — “winner, winner charcoal dinner” — and Wade can evaporate or be sucked up into a sponge. We’re currently in the middle of a drought of good romantic comedies, and, on that level alone, “Elemental” is one of the best examples of the genre to hit the big screen in many seasons.The other driver of the plot is the immigrant story, in the tradition of such early-2000s comedies like “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” and “Bend it Like Beckham.” The archetype of competing notions of tradition versus assimilation is best represented in all three movies of “The Jazz Singer” and, in a way, in the 1936 Tex Avery cartoon “I Love to Singa.” The first-generation child of two immigrants wants to live her life her own way, which, unfortunately, is in direct opposition to her family’s expectations for her. The story juggles these two plot points skillfully while providing a framework for the characterizations, gags, lively music, expert voice acting, and those amazing visuals. “Elemental” is a movie fully worth seeing in 3D; the Pixar team has made digital three-dimensional an artform into itself, throughout you’re immersed in the action. It’s an amazing experience just to look at this world from the center of it. What we once called “backgrounds” in traditional cartoons are now hyper-real imaginary vistas that don’t just stay in the background but extend in all directions and dimensions. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t a few plot holes — as a minor spoiler, I’m still trying to work out in my head why the fire family’s shop will be fined out of business because of a faulty dam on the other side of town. Like “Inside Out,” this seems to be a one-off story, rather than the start of a franchise like “Toy Story”; though to my surprise, an “Inside Out 2” is apparently in production. (Conversely, I can’t wait for an “Incredibles 3.”) After 30 years and 27 major features, there are enough similarities from one film to another — such as the big physical action and chase scene climax of “Toy Story,” “Monsters, Inc,” and most of the others now including “Elemental” — to suggest that the Pixar movie has become a genre unto itself. On a certain primordial level, both the message and the medium are always the same: in the end, we are all human, even though it might take fire, water, toys, bugs, fish, rats, or what have you to show us that.

The Fundamental Things Apply in Pixar’s Dazzling Romantic Comedy, ‘Elemental’

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