On Saturday, Pixar’s much-anticipated 27th feature Elemental closed the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, with the studio’s CCO and pic’s exec producer Pete Docter, director Peter Sohn, producer Denise Ream and cast members Leah Lewis (Ember) and Mamoudou Athei (Wade) in attendance. The feature, which will play at Annecy and opens nationwide on June 12, is set in a world where fire, water, land and air residents co-exist and centers on a a fiery young woman and an easy-going water guy who fall in love with each other against all odds.
However, the early reviews from the Cannes festival have been a bit mixed. Although most praised the creative team for the imaginative designs and the pristine CG-animated creation of the world of the elements, many found the plot-line predictable and formulaic. While the national critics have not all chimed in, the score on the review aggregator site Rottentomatoes.com stands at only 57% this weekend. The studio’s previous four features Lightyear, Turning Red, Luca, Soul and Onward earned 74%, 95%, 91%, 95% and 88% respectively. Obviously, more reviews will be compiled as we approach the actual release date, and the score is bound to climb much higher in the next two weeks.
Here is a quick sampler of what some of the reviews said:
“The element element corresponds to practically nothing children know or recognize about the natural world. Instead of giving them a deeper understanding of Fire, Water, etc., the over-complicated premise creates all sorts of confusing new rules for kids to learn — rules which don’t really apply outside the film. Elemental is so elaborate and calls for so much exposition that the briskly paced movie is still trying to shoehorn essential backstory into the film’s final reel. Sohn should have made the plot simpler, not faster. There’s poetry and soul here, but both are watered down by how much the movie seems to be multitasking.”
— Pete Debruge, Variety
“It’s all there — so much so that Elemental may be the first work from Pixar to feel like it was generated entirely by AI. Not just the AI computing all the imagery, but literally an algorithm putting together a perfect Pixar movie. The problem, of course, is that the originality is mostly absent here, as is the thematic risk-taking that drove films like WALL.E, Inside Out or Coco.”
— Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter
“Ember and Wade’s romance (they meet after he accidentally leaks into her cellar) initially feels like an excuse to tour Element City’s landmarks. But thanks too some of Pixar’s most open-hearted writing in a while, it develops into a genuinely sweet and moving courtship. Nor is it drowned out by the obligatory high-stakes finish — floodwaters surge towards the fire district — which instead affectingly tests the pair’s blossoming love. While unlikely to feature on many people’s favorite Pixar lists, Elemental brings with it the satisfying creak of a ship being righted.
— Robbie Collin, The Telegraph
“Elemental may be rife with lip-service to cultural specifics — so many that they end up a cultural hodgepodge — but its music is the one aesthetic choice that fully embodies the bi-cultural notions the film so desperately attempts to dramatize. Despite its confused and overstuffed world building, Elemental has enough charming moments to get by, even if its meaning lies less in its ill-conceived immigrant saga, and more in the personal drama that lives a few layers beneath it.”
— Siddhant Adlakha, Indiewire
“Elemental, a film that starts out with a clever concept and proceeds to build a world full of invention – exactly what we expect from Pixar – then uses that world as a backdrop for a protracted will they-won’t they flirtation that could have been ripped from the script of a telenovela. I know kids are wise to the ways of the world these days, but that’s the kind of thing that makes them simply embarrassed to be alive, especially when it culminates in a big, gloopy fire-and-water kiss and their parents are in the room.”
— Stephanie Bunbury, Deadline
Watch the trailer below:
