Elemental - Movie Review

The Lumen, a family of fire elements, left their home country and came to Element city to start a new life and better life for their daughter Ember. In the face of prejudice, they opened up a shop in the abandoned part of town, which became the start of the fire quarter of Element city. As Ember grows up she works hard to one day take over the shop and make her father proud until one day when a water pipe burst and threatens to ruin the shop forever. With help from the water elemental Wade Ripple, she sets out to save her home.

The movie Elemental is about being an immigrant in a foreign place, not feeling welcome and still doing your best to fit in. It is about trying to find yourself and your own hopes and dreams while trying to live up to and honour the sacrifice your parents made. It is about falling in love with someone from another culture, another society, another life and following your heart even if it goes against your parents' wishes. Elemental is a beautiful romantic story of two young people from different races and different lives falling in love against all odds. Peter Sohn, the director and creator of Elemental, has stated that he was fascinated by the concept of whether water and fire could ever connect and that the movie also takes inspiration in his own childhood and his parents' story, as he is a son of immigrants himself. However, while not credited nor mentioned, the movie also bares strong resemblance to a short webcomic from 2009 titled "Hold Close" by Ingrid Tan.

Elemental is a fun family movie with beautiful playful animations that explores many possibilities with the different elemental races. However, the movie mainly focus on the fire and water elements as it is the races of the two main characters and their families. There is still a lot of room to revisit Element city and learn about the cloud and earth elements as this movie only scratches their surface. 

I like Elemental, I do believe that the movie could have been expanded more; taking more time to dive into Ember's self identity issues and the conflict between following her heart and do as she was raised. There could also have been more interaction between the different races. Though they constantly bump into and hurt each other, there is very little racial conflict beside generational racism. And the dramatic climax when Ember finally has to chose between Wade and her family could have been bumped up a notch or two. However, I will still give Elemental four out of five stars as it is a cute and lovely story.