[FILM]
ELEMENTAL
Opposites attract: watery Wade and fiery Ember are flying high in love.
★★★
OUT 7 JULY / CERT PG 109 MINS
DIRECTOR Peter Sohn CAST (VOICE) Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie, Ronnie Del Carmen, Catherine O’Hara
PLOT Ember (Lewis) is made of fire; Wade (Athie) is made of water. After a chance meeting which threatens to shut down Ember’s father’s store, they work together to save the family business — and, along the way, find out whether the ‘elements don’t mix’ mantra by which their city lives is really true.
PIXAR IS A studio with proven form in telling heartfelt, impactful stories through the highest of concepts — agirl transforming into a giant red panda as she reaches puberty (Turning Red); an after-life littered with pastel-blue blobs, heading to The Great Beyond on a massive conveyor belt (Soul); emotions portrayed as walking, talking entities, battling over their owner’s personality in a big control room (the unmatched Inside Out). Elemental follows that thread, the characters here all made up of one of the four core elements (fire, air, water, earth), living together in ‘Element City’. Except, they’re not really living together — because of the harm the different elements pose to each other, they simply don’t mix.