Follows Ember and Wade, in a city where fire-, water-, land- and air-residents live together.

Pixar are fast approaching their 30^th movie and for the first time in their history they have perhaps hit a bit of a sticky spell, with some of their recent movies (‘Onward’, ‘Luca’, ‘Turning Red’ and the less said about ‘Lightyear’ the better!) failing to live up to the high expectations they’d set for themselves over the years. ‘Elemental’, their latest movie, comes from Peter Sohn who previously directed the largely forgettable ‘The Good Dinosaur’, and thankfully I thought this was a return to form for Pixar, even if it’s unlikely to be troubling anyone’s all-time favourites list.

‘Elemental’ introduces us to a world where everyone is an element of nature, bringing us to the big city of ‘Element City’ where a variety of fire, water, air and earth elements live together, albeit not in harmony. We see the world through the eyes of a young fire element (Ember, voiced by Leah Lewis) and follow her attempts to prevent her father’s store being closed down due to a water leak, while developing a romance with a young water element (Wade, voiced by Mamoudou Athie). At its heart this is a romantic comedy cum immigrant story, and its main themes centre on acceptance and overcoming differences to see people for who they really are. It isn’t subtle by any stretch, but it has charm, it made me laugh and it is a visual treat – which to be fair, is par for the course with even the weakest Pixar efforts.

Its attempts to touch on bigger world themes don’t really land as well as intended, but I enjoyed the world of Element City and liked the characters, finding myself rooting for Ember and Wade and it was interesting to see a Pixar film that was unashamedly romantic. After a spell of movies that did very little for me, I got a lot more from ‘Elemental’ and thought this was a light and charming animated movie that reinforced that even Pixar at its simplest can still be a lot of fun.

Rating: 4/5

Directed By: Peter Sohn

Starring: Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie, Ronnie del Carmen, Shila Ommi, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Catherine O’Hara, Mason Wertheimer, Ronobir Lahiri, Wilma Bonet, Joe Pera, Matt Yang King and Jonathan Adams

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt15789038/