Leave it to Pixar to get one of its non-white directors (Peter Sohn of “The Good Dinosaur” fame) to craft a story about fulfilling someone’s dreams in a foreign land, thus being a clear allegory to immigration and the tough fight it is to get there, spliced in with a romance story. Said romance revolves around a girl named Ember (voiced by Leah Lewis) and a guy named Wade (Mamoudou Athie); the trailers are enough to frame what kind of tone it’s setting.

The one major thing that sets this apart from the rest? Ember is a fire elemental while Wade is a water elemental. Both of them have their strengths and weaknesses related to their properties; Ember can get parts of her put out by water splashes & waterfalls, but she works best in the heat and burns things easily. She also has quite a temper, which is a plot point that gets smoothed out accordingly. Wade is chill and insightful, but gets too emotional like his other water kin; he also boils up when close to heat but is fine with anything water-related.

Go With The Flow

In fact, the whole setting is in a metropolis called Element City where all four types of races -Water, Air (puffy cotton candy-like folks), Land (literal humanoid dirtballs), and Fire- all live together in harmony. Almost; people still treat Fire people like crap most of the time. But the discrimination and racial prejudice take a backseat (the complete opposite tone of animated wunderkind Zootopia) in favour of whether a fire person or water person can make love bloom while also dealing with aspirations from the former’s fire father, Bernie (Ronnie Del Carmen), who built his business from scratch.

The creative elemental interactions do take centrestage and are mixed up with the pretty-familiar plot about a woman having to choose between her newfound aspirations and keeping her dad’s dream alive. And honest to god? It’s a hoot to watch while also spotting visual puns and seeing how all four elements work with each other. It can get overwhelming though, especially for the young ones.

It’s clear as day that Sohn draws from his second-generation immigrant status to frame the Fire people’s status and their place in the big city, and it’s a refreshing outlook for many viewers, especially for folks from Asia who moved to a big city like the US or UK. From a PG-rated perspective, it’s not on the same deeper and more insightful level as Zootopia, but it’s serviceable since the focus is on Ember, Wade, and Bernie.

Quite A Sizzle

With a solid voice cast and lovely world-building and visual effects showcasing all sorts of elements interacting with each other, it’s only natural that the show’s plot has to be grounded in some sense.  Granted, “grounded” is just a codeword for “predictable” and “trope-filled”. Still, it’s the kind that emanates a warm fuzzy feeling as a romantic comedy-kind movie with immigration and American Dream metaphors worked into it and flowing just as smoothly as water.

Final Score: 70/100