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Do you want ants? Because that’s how you get ants.
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The women talked, and boy did we listened
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Elemental – Movie Review
What’s it about?
In a city where fire, water, land, and air residents live together, a fiery young woman and a go-with-the-flow guy discover something elemental: how much they actually have in common.
What’d we think?
Elemental is a solid entry in the Disney/Pixar canon, but it’s missing the spark that made its predecessors so magical. The movie opens with a neat little Ellis-Island parallel, establishing that the fantastical Element City grew with different waves of elements/immigrants, meeting our fiery heroine Ember and seeing her early years living and working in her parent’s shop, a cornerstone of the Fire-Person expatriate community. We’re quickly introduced to Wade, a hilariously emotionally-sensitive Water-Person, and a teense-weense bit of conflict is thrown into the mix to force the two together.
The immigrant-experience narrative is executed fairly well, with its lack of direct parallel to any one culture hammering home the universality of the diasporic experience while still feeling authentic. The love story between the two leads is the movie’s strongest element (I honestly tried to use a different word, get over it), and I had a nice little moment of realisation at the midpoint when I realised “oh it’s just a romance”. There’s no real outside source of complication to drive a wedge between the characters, just the difference in what they expect from themselves and others.
As lovely as all of this is, it doesn’t quite feel like it’s got enough meat on its bones to justify its runtime, and apart from one notably lovely musical number the score was completely forgettable. While the themes of acceptance and understanding others are no doubt valuable for kids, the love story feels like it would strike a chord with a (slightly) older audience, and apart from a few chuckles there’s not much in it for the grown-ups. I really enjoyed the absence of distracting celebrity voices, I was definitely never bored, and I had a few good cries (but I’m a Water-Person so that doesn’t mean much), but it’s definitely relegated to the middle tier of Pixar’s back catalogue.
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Bob Marley: One Love – Movie Review
What’s it about?
It’s a Bob Marley biopic. I genuinely tried to think of more for this, but yeah that’s about it.
What’d we think?
The movie begins in 1976 with Bob Marley at the peak of his fame, some stuff happens, and then the movie ends in 1978 with Bob still at the peak of his fame. This period covers an attempt on Marley’s life, the band recording an album in London, then a return to Jamaica for a peace concert, and all of this is portrayed in the least interesting way possible. We’re made aware that Political Stuff is happening in Jamaica, but there’s no attempt at explaining the conflict or characterising either side. The band comes up with an idea for their new album, and then they record the new album. They discuss returning to Jamaica for a concert, then return to Jamaica for the concert. There’s no conflict, no interesting relationships, and ultimately no point.
Kingsley Ben-Adir does a fine evocation of Marley in the lead role, but doesn’t have any opportunity to imbue the role with any depth (the Marley family’s involvement likely sanitised anything that might have been interesting), and Lashana Lynch sleepwalks her way through an underwritten role as Rita Marley. While I can’t speak for the authenticity of the cast’s Jamaican accents, I can testify to the regular incomprehensibility of the dialogue as a result of their commitment to the bit, although I don’t believe that understanding the actors would have made the movie any more interesting.
Bob Marley: One Love (the movie doesn’t even have the balls to trust the audience could figure out who the movie is about unless you whack his name in there) is a meandering exercise in paint-by-numbers biopic filmmaking that completely lacks any charm or energy.
Madame Web Movie Review
Does it do whatever a spider can?