Tag Archives: C+

ELEMENTAL

Producer: Denise Ream   Director: Peter Sohn   Screenplay: John Hoberg, Kat Likkel and Brenda Hsueh Cast: Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie, Ronnie Del Carmen, Shila Ommi, Wendi McLendon-Covery, Catherine O’Hara, Mason Wertheimer, Joe Pera, Matt Yang King and Ronobir Lahiri    Distributor: Disney 

Grade: C+

The images in Pixar’s newest film have a luminous beauty, but as was the case with “The Good Dinosaur” (2015), Peter Sohn’s previous feature for the studio, “Elemental” is weak in the story department.  It’s basically an odd-couple romance, with a heavy dose of immigrant-experience struggle added to the mix—a combination that’s hardly unfamiliar.

What is unusual is the locale it which the story is set—Element City, a metropolis inhabited by denizens literally made up of different elements (air, earth, fire and water, the quartet that prevailed in pre-modern thought).  The girl at the center of things is Ember (voiced by Leah Lewis), whose parents Bernie Lumen (Ronnie Del Carmen) and his wife Cinder (Shila Ommi) have traveled from Fireland to make a better life for themselves.  They find that the city is semi-segregated, and their kind are concentrated in a neighborhood called Fire Town, where Bernie opens a store called Fireplace that flourishes while meeting the needs of the sometimes cantankerous locals, and Ember grows from a tyke to a young woman happily helping her dad at the counter.

But it’s a ramshackle place, and when city inspector Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie) shows up to look into a leak from basement pipes that should have been shut down long ago, he begins writing up violations that threaten to shut down the business.  But he’s a goofy, apologetic fellow, obviously taken by the feistiness of the strong-willed, aggressive Ember, and he offers to help in her battle with the municipal authorities, particularly his boss (Wendi McClendon-Covery), a puffy air cloud who’s a passionate supporter of a local airball team, the Windbreakers.  She gives the duo a chance to trace the source of the water leak and make repairs to save Fireplace. 

A few representatives of Earth also feature in the movie—there’s Fern Grouchwood (Joe Pera), a fusty bureaucrat, and Clod (Mason Wertheimer), a kid in Fire Town who has a thing for Ember, but the emphasis remains on the Fire-and-Water dichotomy as the relationship between Ember and Wade deepens—Bernie and Cinder are pretty adamant in their opposition to their daughter getting involved with a Water Guy.  On the other hand, Wade’s well-to-do family—his mother Brook (Catherine O’Hara), uncle Harold (Ronobir Lahiri) and brother Alan (Matt Yang King)—are quite supportive of the duo, welcoming Ember for dinner.  Brook is also taken by Ember’s ability to melt and harden glass, which expresses her desire to become an artist rather than follow in her father’s footsteps, and is in a position to help the girl reach for her dream, much to Bernie’s distress.

The detective-work part of the couple’s growing romance gets pretty short shrift—they track down the cause of the overflowing water, and Ember uses her glass-manipulating power to fix it at least temporarily; but otherwise it’s shunted aside.  Note that there’s no malevolence involved: this is a Disney film that lacks a villain, except for bigotry.  That’s typical of the entire movie, which is based more on abstractions, as artfully personified as they might be, than on individuals. 

Yet the personifications are beautifully rendered.  The dancing orange flickers that make up the Fire folk and the shimmering blue motions of the Water people are lovely, and while the other two kinds of element-based citizens are less imaginatively rendered (cotton-candy fluffs for the air types, brown clumps with leaves and branches for the earthy types), the backgrounds are astonishingly colorful.  And Sohn inserts a big set-piece to allow for a special explosion of the animator’s craft—a visit Wade arranges for Ember to an underwater garden where she can finally see the legendary tree of life she was prevented from viewing as a child. 

Yet in the end despite the remarkable work of animation supervisors Michael Venturini, Kureha Yokoo and their team, visual effects supervisor Sanjay Bakshi and his, production designer Don Shank, cinematographers David Juan Bianchi and Jean-Claude Kalache and editor Stephen Schaffer (as well as a score by Thomas Newman that pushes the emotional buttons hard), and fine voice work overall, Sohn’s film emerges as a gorgeous but rather heavy-handed allegory of an opposites-attract romance, given some genuine heft only in its undercurrents about anti-immigrant attitudes.            

“Elemental” is certainly superior to “Strange World,” the last Disney animated feature released to theatres, and also one more notable for its visuals than its narrative.  But especially for kids, it’s inferior to some that went straight to streaming, like “Luca,” which was both far more fun and more touching.  And adults will probably look back to “Inside Out” and “Soul” as Pixar offerings that took on serious subjects to greater effect.

They all are likely to agree, though, that “Up” was one of Pixar’s best, and its main character reappears with Ed Asner’s voice in the short “Carl’s Date,” which is being released as a kind of overture to “Elemental.”  Unfortunately, it fails to recapture the spirit of the 2009 classic—it’s okay but frankly negligible.

MENDING THE LINE

Producers: Kelly McKendry, Scott MacLeod, Carl Effenson, Stephen Camelio and Joshua Caldwell   Director: Joshua Caldwell   Screenplay: Stephen Camelio   Cast: Sinqua Walls, Brian Cox, Perry Mattfeld, Chris Galust, Patricia Heaton, Wes Studi and Michaela Sasner   Distributor: Blue Fox Entertainment

Grade: C+

The potential therapeutic benefits of fly-fishing for military veterans (and, presumably, others) suffering from PTSD are dramatized in this earnest but manipulative film from Stephen Camelio and Joshua Caldwell.  “Mending the Line” is reminiscent of the blandly well-intentioned fare that was once a staple of network television like the Hallmark Hall of Fame, but it’s elevated to some extent by strong lead performances from Sinqua Walls and Brian Cox. 

Walls plays John Colter, a wounded Marine traumatized by a botched mission in Afghanistan; he blames himself for the deaths of many in his squad.  He’s received treatment elsewhere in the VA system, but has arrived at a medical facility in Montana, whose head Dr. Burke (Patricia Heaton) will, he hopes, sanction his return to active duty.  After watching how volatile he can be, she suggests that he might benefit from going fly-fishing with another of her patients, Ike Fletcher (Cox), a grizzled Vietnam vet who’s been suffering from blackouts, which she fears could be dangerous if he has one while out fishing alone.  Colter isn’t exactly enthused of the idea, but goes to visit Fletcher at his cabin.

Cantankerous Ike is no more enthusiastic at the thought of teaching a newbie the secrets of a sport that, from the content of his home, he takes very seriously, and gives Colter a quick brush-off.  But taking the advice of the old man’s close, and perhaps only, friend Harrison (Wes Studi), Colter decides to do some homework on fly fishing and approaches local librarian Lucy (Perry Mattfeld) for some books on the subject.  But beset by her own emotional problems—she’s still grieving the loss of her fiancé in a motorcycle crash, and his mother (Michaela Sasner), obsessed with keeping her son’s memory alive, won’t let her move on—Lucy initially brushes him off, too.  She soon relents, however, and the next time Colter approaches Ike, he’s not unprepared.

Thus begins what might be called the “Karate Kid” part of the film, in which Fletcher assigns the Marine mundane tasks designed, he’ll eventually explains, to teach him the most valuable lesson in fly-fishing—no, not patience, but humility.  Then they’re off to Fletcher’s favorite fishing spot, and Colter is taught to “mend the line”—manipulating the line after the throw to enhance the possibility of attracting the fish to the lure.  John is surprised that Ike always releases a caught fish back into the water, saying his military experience persuaded him never to kill again.  That’s a sign of the trauma he too suffered; like Colter he first turned to alcohol to dampen his guilt, until he discovered the serenity fly-fishing brought him.  It’s also an indication that he still needs some sort of closure as much as John and Lucy do.

Things come to a head for all of them in the film’s last act, which becomes a sort of redemption tale three times over.  It would be untrue to say that the twists avoid cloyingness and contrivance, including a good deal of backsliding on Colter’s part, but if Walls, Cox and Mattfeld can’t make them all convincing, they at least make them go down relatively painlessly; Cox even brings conviction to some awfully obvious monologues.  A coda also allows for Colter to become a teacher of sorts, bringing the joys of the sport he’s mastered to others—not just Lucy, but other vets, like the dejected Kovacs (Chris Galust).

There’s some lovely Montana scenery in “Mending the Line”—a title, of course, intended to convey a double meaning–and cinematographer Eva M. Cohen makes the most of it in her widescreen images.  Elsewhere her work is proficient but unremarkable, as is that of production designer Freddy Waff.  Will Torbett’s editing tends toward the sluggish, as does Caldwell’s direction—the film demands considerable patience—and Bill Brown’s score is positively syrupy.  (One sighs in relief when it goes silent.)

But the ensemble helps one get over the maudlin parts.  Heaton is rather wasted and Sasner overacts, but Studi brings some whimsical humor to Harrison.  And while Mattfeld can be stiff, Walls manages to put over even the sequence in which a visit to a buzzy bar brings on flashbacks to Afghanistan and sends him back to the bottle. 

But it’s Cox who makes the decidedly calculating and predictable movie as watchable as it is.  Stardom has come late to the actor, who has long been reliable in supporting character roles as well as stunning in a few lead ones (like Michael Cuesta’s “L.I.E.,” which also provided Paul Dano with his first opportunity to shine), but better late than never.  He makes Ike Fletcher, for all his orneriness, a character you want to spend some time with, especially when he’s casting his line—and then mending it.