Elemental’ Review: Sparks Fly

Elemental’ Review: Sparks Fly

“Elemental” is the latest Pixar premise to feel like someone laced the cafeteria’s kombucha keg with ayahuasca. Starting eight years ago with “Inside Out,” the animation company has transformed cartoons into a form of group therapy that encourages audiences to ruminate on inner peace, death (“Coco”) and resurrection (“Soul”). This story is simpler (elemental, even). It’s a girl-meets-boy cross-cultural romantic comedy — a good one that woos us to root for the big kiss. But the Pixar-brand psychotropic flourish comes from which cultures. Here, they are water, earth, air and fire — the four classical elements that the ancient philosopher Empedocles used to explain our world — all tenuously coexisting in Element City, a Manhattan analogue founded by the first droplet to ooze out of the primordial sea. The girl, Ember Lumen (voiced by Leah Lewis), is a leggy lick of flame; her crush, Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie), is a drip. When she brushes near him, his body roils. Steamy.

This setup sounds strange and looks stranger. Yet, the four classical elements are one of civilization’s great unifiers, a cosmological theory shared by the Hindu Vedas, the Buddhist Mahabhuta, the Kongo cosmogram, the Indigenous medicine wheel and the zodiac. We’ve long interpreted life through water, earth, air and fire. Now, the trick is to see the life in them, once we squint past the visually overwhelming chaos of Element City, a smelting pot of puns and allusions.

You’d have to freeze-frame each scene to absorb all the sight gags: fire-mommies pushing fire-babies in BBQ grills, tree-couples tenderly harvesting each other’s apples, luxury tower aquariums with sunken swimming pools for a living room, whirlwind basketball games that hawk souvenir cloud-shaped pants. Even then, the yuks spillith over into the closing credits whose margins are cluttered with funny bits of illustrated flotsam like Lighterfinger candy bars and Sizzlemint gum.

The suspension of disbelief is so staggering that one flaw in the execution would cause the whole gimmick to collapse. I decided to trust the director, Peter Sohn, during the opening sequence. As Ember’s future parents, Bernie and Cinder (Ronnie del Carmen and Shila Ommi) disembark upon a bizarro Ellis Island, all-too-aware that they’re two of the earliest fireball émigrés, I clocked her father’s chain mail pants and relaxed. Metal knickers are the kind of minutia that tells you Sohn and the three screenwriters (John Hoberg, Kat Likkel and Brenda Hsueh) have pored over every corner of their high concept, allowing us to make the mental switch from scanning the landscape suspiciously to marveling in the details.

The staggering design ambition balances out the plot’s affecting, relatable ordinariness, which kicks in a couple of decades after the Lumens settle in and open a store that ignites a thriving fire community. By the time Ember is an adult, the Firish (as in “Kiss Me, I’m…”) have erected blocks of residential kilns that resemble a modernized Cappadocia. Yet, there’s no forgetting that Element City was once a wets-only town. The Wetro light rail zipping overhead creates a splash zone of urban blight in its wake.

Ember expects to inherit the family shop. Then Wade bursts through the pipes. Smartly, the couple’s differences aren’t just tactile — they’re cultural. A child of immigration and sacrifice, she’s overworked, emotionally burdened, vulnerable to being snuffed and prone to explode. He’s a preppy, soft-bellied blue-blood comfortable wearing his emotions on (or rather, soaking through) his sleeves. Even his name — Wade Ripple — belongs inside a champagne bucket in Kennebunkport.

The film’s loveliest stretches watch the pair tentatively discover each other’s habitats. She’s enchanted by (and quietly resentful of) his confidence that he’s welcome anywhere. He finds purpose encouraging her to forge through a society inclined to see her as distracting (dark movie theaters are a no-go), off-putting (what’s with that flamin’ hot food!) and dangerous (look out when her temper ticks past its flashpoint).

Their romance doesn’t rush a beat. Oddly, it’s the most human rom-com in years. There’s no villain, no phony contrivances, and the mandatory breakup is well-buttressed by the script. The running time is strung together from dozens of perceptive moments and the occasional stunning set-piece. A near-wordless scuba dive (a callback to WALL-E and Eva’s space ballet?) plays like a swoony Bollywood interlude alongside Thomas Newman’s gentle, semi-acoustic score, which could double as a mood-setter at a meditation retreat. This is what animation should do: wow us with expressive, impossible wonders rather than reimagining Flounder from “The Little Mermaid” as a photorealistic fish.

“Elemental” seems like a stunt from a company running dry on ideas. Perhaps that’s partially true. Yet, it’s in the tradition of mankind’s long history looking to water, earth, air and fire to understand itself. Only, please, nobody tell Pixar that Aristotle added a fifth element, ether, which physicists interpret as dark matter or the void. My brain can’t handle a sequel.

ElementalRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters.