If you missed any of the puns (and there are plenty) in the big-screen edition of “Elemental,” you may want to get the DVD edition to slow it down at home.
Writers, apparently, were so enamored with their ability to play off the characters’ earth, wind, fire and water clichés they didn’t miss an opportunity to toss in two more. The result is an overstuffed metaphor for the world.
It might have landed better had it not been so obvious. Instead of using fire people as substitutes for immigrants, why not the real thing? Much about this left viewers’ heads in, well, a fog.
The story: A young spark, Ember Lumen (voiced by Leah Lewis), hopes to take over her father’s business, The Fireplace, once he retires. The kiln-like building, however, is falling apart and draws attention from city inspectors, who send slippery Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie) to issue citations. Things get steamy when he gets near Ember and, soon, a relationship starts to bubble (see how easy this is?).
She worries, though, that her father won’t accept someone from another part of town, particularly someone who could douse the business and throw cold water on his life. She keeps the relationship from her parents, while still dating Wade. Without much effort, the two discover dad’s leaky pipes could be related to a dam break that threatens everyone.
Considering Element City looks as high-tech as Shanghai, you’d think the city would have discovered its dam problem. Instead, the two “friends” devise a way to patch it (she’s a whiz at glass blowing, go figure) and try to see what life is like in the other’s world. A visit to Wade’s family is particularly good (Catherine O’Hara voices his mother), because the Ripples are easy criers. Naturally, one of the relatives is fluent with watercolors. And so it goes.
While much of this could exist as a companion to “Zootopia,” director Peter Sohn shies away from the stereotypes that made that film work. Here, all of the elements are seen as good – in their own communities. When they’re in another’s, they’re viewed as suspect. It’s an interesting take but one that doesn’t produce many laughs. The film also doesn’t offer alternatives. Isn’t there a mate for Ember in the Fire community? Similarly, has Wade failed to enter the Water dating pool?
After a while, it becomes too difficult to question the choices (a child flame, for example, sucks on a bottle of lighter fluid) and make sense of the story. There’s not much here but there is an attempt to show how the world can live in harmony, if everyone budges.
Call it “woke,” if you will, but it amounts to a watered-down allegory that manufactures a pot of gold before it even finds the rainbow.
