Elemental

Gentle and humane but never raw or vulnerable.

There are tonal parallels with Pixar’s Inside Out and Zootropolis, but while it has a peppy visual energy, Elemental lacks the wildly inventive storytelling of the former and the laughs of the latter.

A bit like Inside Out meets Zootropolis – but not as fully worked out as either – it’s a movie of lovely, radiant moments.

Busy, zany and sincere, the movie does a perfectly good job with the stuff of urban culture clash. But it is also fatally unfunny, and gets more so with every weird contrivance it whips up.

The problem is that there’s not enough storytelling muscle here for the allusion to really land.

Surely a reality where the elements are in charge should be more inventive, not limited by the trappings of capitalism and gender norms?

There is no shortage of imagination in place, and the fluid animation, paired with the kinetic pacing and creative solutions to singular elemental problems, shows a dynamic engagement with the premise on the part of the director and animators.

The animation is perfect, but the script is weak, and for a film like this the writing really needed to be much much sharper. It's all a bit damp.

It’s not often you get an original concept from Pixar that doesn’t work.

Elemental manages to be pleasantly heart-warming, if not nearly as profound or affecting as some of the studios’ previous projects.