Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic I reckon there are more ideas per second of screentime in “Elemental” than any other Pixar movie to date.
So why does this imagination-teasing opposites-attract rom-com feel like a misfire? No one can accuse director Peter Sohn (“The Good Dinosaur”) or his team of under-thinking the ultra-creative studio’s latest high-concept feature, which takes the four elements as identified by various ancient cultures — Fire, Water, Earth and Air — and reimagines them as uneasy neighbors in a crowded modern metropolis.
But fun as it can be to soak in the movie’s cheeky sense of detail (from flame-retardant costumes to blink-and-you-miss-them background puns), the whole scenario seems forced: so much world-building to tell a story better suited to flesh-and-blood human characters.
In its over-designed, nuevo-New-York way, Element City feels an awful lot like Zootopia, but with gelatinous blue blobs (Water) and glowing orange torch-people (Fire) in place of animal species.
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