As with most Disney titles, this animated beauty is not only a sight to behold but also teaches a little something along with its irrefutable entertainment value.
We can probably all remember the first Disney film we ever watched. For me, it was Dumbo on Super 8, and without sound, which my dad projected on our biggest, picture free wall in the living room. It made me dream and think that anything was possible back then. More visits to the cinema provided more Disney entertainment, sometimes live action like 1968’s The Love Bug, starring Michele Lee and Dean Jones, other times grand operatic works of art like Fantasia, the 1940 American animated musical anthology film, which changed things for cinema and the Walt Disney Company with one magic wand’s swift swoop.
What I find fascinating, and perhaps a bit magical too is that still today, that’s the kind of enthusiastic feeling that watching a Disney film brings. I may be older, much older, more jaded, wearing a bit of a chip on my shoulder and yet sitting inside the Vue cinema in London, for the UK premiere of the latest Disney Pixar collaboration, surrounded by kids and their parents, I could feel the excitement bubble up inside me. This is now decades later, the film is Elemental, London substitutes Florence, Italy as my home city these days, but it is still that magical, anything is possible feeling that I got, surrounded by my fellow movie-watchers back in my early childhood. And the kids, their excitement and joy, the funny questions asked of their parents in the quiet lulls of the film, those are all the same too.
Elemental is another one of those magnificently animated films to come out from the collaboration between Disney and Pixar. The director this time around is Korean American filmmaker and voiceover actor Peter Sohn, whose past ventures — or shall we call them adventures? — include voicing Emile in the 2007 animated film Ratatouille and directing the Pixar short Partly Cloudy as well as the feature The Good Dinosaur. Sohn also co-wrote the story of Elemental.
The tagline of the film is “opposites react” and the story takes place in Element City, as we watch a married fire couple arrive there from Fireland. The immigrant couple tell their complicated names to the customs official and when he struggles to understand them, he renames them “Bernie and Cinder.” Cinder is pregnant and soon gives birth to quick-witted, tough cookie Ember, a real spitfire, if you’ll pardon my pun.
But what is cool about this storyline is that Elemental is really a story about acceptance and the immigrant experience. While those belonging to the fire element are almost alienated on the outskirts of Element City, in the Flame district, water, air and earth co-habit side by side, living a harmonious existence in the blissfully colored megacity. What makes us belong, what causes racism, can love conquer all and especially how do we live side by side, sometimes right up against one another when our basic needs and habits can be so very opposite to those around us? These are all questions that are raised, and somehow answered in Elemental.
One day, during a serious meet cute, Ember runs into Wade, an emotional, kind-hearted blub of a water city inspector who is sucked into the basement of the store that Ember’s family runs, an establishment called Fireside. Wade feels Ember’s spark and she is intrigued by his possible coolness so the pair soon go about trying to save the Fireside from succumbing under the weight of Element City’s department of buildings. Let’s just say that Fern, the building inspector at City Hall, and Gale, a windy pink fluff who is an avid Air Ball fan, both come in to liven up the action and bring lots of adventures to Elemental.
The UK poster for Elemental
The voice actors who lend their talents to the characters are a whole story in themselves. Chinese-born American actress Leah Lewis plays Ember Lumen and she lends just the right amount of energy and warmth to the part. Lewis is known to audiences for her role as Ellie Chu in the 2020 Netflix film The Half of It, as well as playing Georgia "George" Fan in The CW series adaptation of Nancy Drew.
Playing Wade Ripple, and don’t we just adore those last names too, is Mauritania-born American actor Mamoudou Athie, who was tapped for the role in Elemental after director Sohn watched him in the Netflix title Uncorked, playing opposite Courtney B. Vance as a man going against his father’s wishes, who dreams of a future as a master sommelier — a professional wine taster. Athie is best known for starring in the 2022 Netflix horror series Archive 81 and supporting roles in films including Jurassic World: Dominion (2022).
Bernie and Cinder Lumen, Ember’s parents, are played by Filipino animator and actor Ronnie del Carmen and Tehran born, LA-based actress Shila Ommi respectively. What we the audience end up feeling for those characters is all due to the great talents tapped here to voice them, as an animation can be just a drawing, without the right soul and heartfelt acting performance behind it.
The most ingenious casting coup of the film lies perhaps in featuring the voice of Home Alone mom, actress Catherine O’Hara who plays Wade’s mom in the film, Brook Ripple. Her warm tones and recognizable voice make the character embody the perfect wave of emotions (again you must pardon my really tired puns, but I can’t seem to be able to resist with Elemental). And we love that she’s the one who gives Ember the right push towards becoming all that she can be. The welcoming atmosphere at the penthouse of the Ripple family is also a great inspiration in how we should be treating our neighbors, especially those who aren’t just like us.
Ultimately, the greatness of Elemental lies in telling an “elemental” story, that taps into the importance of acceptance of the Other, but also how each one of us has something to bring to the table when it comes to getting along with our neighbors, be they in the apartment next door or on the other side of the world. If we can blend our differences into a handshake of similarities, we can each retains and maintain our important traditions while also learning from those of the “Other” — the persons whose habits and heritage may seem really so far from ours, but in the end, are only a reminder that within our veins, a blood just as red and a life just as warm runs through them.
Elemental has already opened in cinemas in the US and around the Arabian Gulf but will kick off in UK cinemas on July 7th, 2023.