Haven’t we all felt out of our element at some time in our lives? When people move to a new city or state or even a new country, it takes time to make it home and the journey there isn’t always easy. Finding a home in a new place is what’s at the heart of Pixar’s new animated feature film, “Elemental.” If you know anything about the world, you already know the line from the trailer, “Elements don’t mix” isn’t true and there will be some mixing, but it’s all PG.

The elements are taken not from hard science, but from old Western understanding of the world, most often manifested in daily life through astrology. You probably know your astrological sign, but did you know the 12 signs are divided into four elements: fire, earth, air and water.

• Fire Signs: Aries, Leo, Sagittarius
• Earth Signs: Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn
• Air Signs: Gemini, Libra, Aquarius
• Water Signs: Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces.

This is different from Chinese astrology which divides the signs into five elements: water, wood, fire, earth and metal. The fixed elements are:

• Metal: Monkey, Rooster
• Wood: Tiger, Rabbit
• Water: Rat, Pig
• Fire: Snake, Horse
• Earth: Ox, Dragon, Goat, Dog

There is also an annual association with one element. Each year is assigned a element. So while this year is the Year of the Rabbit and the Rabbit/Cat is associated with the element of wood, this is the Year of the Water Rabbit.

If you’re a fan of the Nickelodeon animated series “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” you also be familiar with the Western four elements because although that animated series was heavily influenced by Chinese martial arts and Asian Pacific Islander cultures, the writers were two Americans: (Italian American) Michael Dante DiMartino  and Bryan Konietzko (who is possibly Slavic American).

In Pixar’s new film, “Elemental,”  the elements are anthropomorphized into different peoples and besides their appearances, their names reflect their elemental basis.  Our main characters, Ember and Wade, are fire and water, respectively. While fire and water may seem to be opposites, the ancient concept of elements saw them as necessary parts of the world and in “Elemental” these two must find a  way to work together and possibly even become sweethearts. This is a sweet fun film, without any of the commercial aspects one usually associates with animation from Disney.

By commercial, I mean one usually expects any Disney production to come with a cute and easily marketable sidekick. The story for “Elemental”  was developed by Korean American Peter Sohn, Asian American Brenda Hush, John Hoberg and Kat Like wit the script by Hoberg, Like and Hsueh. Both Hsueh and Sohn grew up in New York City and the film is inspired by Sohn’s experiences growing up in the 1970s, in a city that has distinctive cultural and ethnic diversity with a public transport system that forces people to literally rub shoulders.

In Sohn’s feature film directorial debut, Pixar’s 2015 “The Good Dinosaur,” there was marketing products galore, including some characters that never actually made it into the film. I bought a few of those, but my household is dinosaur crazy. That film production was troubled, but this one seems to have gone more smoothly, although it took seven years to make, including some remote work at the filmmakers’s homes due to the pandemic.

Sohn may be familiar to animation fans physically and you might know with his voice. The character of Russell, the Asian American boy in “Up” was modeled to look similar to Sohn and he has provided the voice for Russell in a short. He also voiced a character in “The Good Dinosaur” (Forrest Woodbrush, a Styracosaurus) and, more recently, the robotic cat, Sox, in the 2022 Pixar film, “Lightyear.”

The film begins with a young fire element couple, Bernie (Filipino animator and voice actor Ronnie del Carmen) and Cinder (Shila Ommi) Lumen, as they arrive at Element City. The city is better suited for water, air and earth elements, but eventually Bernie and Cinder make a home in a deserted part of town. They live upstairs from the convenience store they open, the Fireplace, where they offer tasty treats that are literally too hot for non-fire elements.  From their homeland, they’ve brought a Blue Flame that they keep in a special ceremonial fire pit continuously burning. This is part of their tradition.

Flash forward, and their store is a gathering place for Fire element patrons and they have a daughter, Ember (Chinese American actress Leah Lewis) who is being raised to eventually inherit the shop. Ember unfortunately has a hot temper and, as anyone who has worked retailed knows, some customers can try the patience of a saint. Ember is no saint; she’s more like a nicely dressed stick of dynamite with a short fuse. After one particularly trying exchange, she runs to the basement and explodes, and her fiery temper translates into ferocious flames that melt the old water pipes in spots. Fire elements don’t do well with water, but water elements go with the flow. From this flooded basement springs up Wade Ripple (Mauritanian American Mamoudou Athie). Wade was inspecting some activity when he was suck into a stream of water that ended up the Fireplace’s basement. Unfortunately, he’s an inspector and he needs to report water piping violations that will force the Fireplace to close. Water isn’t something that the fire elements need, or do they?

Ember first attempts to stop him from filing his citations, but arrives too late as earth element bureaucrat, Fern Grouchwood (Joe Pera) sends the citations on. As a last appeal, Wade takes Ember to air element Gale Cumulus (Wendi McLendon-Covey). Gale gives Ember and Wade a brief reprieve: If they can  find the reason behind the water problem and fix it in three days, the Fireplace will be saved. As you can probably guess, things don’t always flow they way you want, but as they swim upstream, there will find romance, but nothing too steamy happens here. This is clean cut romance with some waterworks (crying) and bathos.

The element of truth is that while earth, water and air might seem to be naturally aligned, a better fit for harmonious life with fire as a threat to both earth and air, and while water seems a threat to fire, in the right combinations the four elements make the world a better place. In the film, water is able to help fire; Wade asks Ember what she really wants in life because maybe her anger is a sign of her true desires.

The voice acting is good and the elemental word play makes it fun for adults and older kids. The real strength of “Elemental”is in its visuals. Element City is a wonderfully inspired creation and the way the different elements act and react to both each other and their environments is inventive. The diversity casting is apparent in the voice actors and the director, creators and writers. “Elemental” is a good film for the family and for anyone about to embark on an adventure to live someone new.

“Elemental” made its world premiere at Cannes Film Festival (27 May 2023) and opened in the US on 16 June 2023.