‘Elemental’ is a Fun Ride
A rom-com packed full of important themes.
Elemental takes us into the world where elements are alive. We meet Ember (Leah Lewis) and Wade (Mamoudou Athie), fire and water, who develop an unexpected relationship.
This film is absolutely beautiful! You can tell that it took these incredibly talented animators time to craft something this extensive and expansive. It’s also very well thought through. There are fun moments, like when fire and water enter a photo booth together, and the image only captures fire. We see the difficulty of fire watching a movie in a dark theater. It’s so fun to imagine how these different elements would act and interact together.
Elemental isn’t just creative and fun but has a lot of heart and even more to say!
Let’s start with the characters. Ember is a firey, strong-willed young woman. Throughout her life, she’s been preparing to one day take over her father, Bernie (Ronnie Del Carmen)’s store, his pride and joy. Though she has many of the skills necessary to run the shop, she often loses her temper with the customers. She tries to just breathe through it, suppressing those emotions but is unable to do so for very long. Over the course of the film, she begins to inspect her feelings to understand what her temper is saying to her.
