I have read some mixed reviews about this movie, and while it is not on par with the Toy Story movies or the best of Hayao Miyazaki's work, as far as ordinary animated movies go, this is above average, and my son and I enjoyed it very much.
The movie is set in Element City, where water, earth, air, and fire people live together -- but the fire folks have been discriminated against and mostly live separately from the other elements, in their own community. It opens with a fire couple arriving at an Ellis Island-like processing center, where they're dubbed Cinder and Bernie Lumen because the agent who helps them can't get their actual names. They eventually have a baby girl named Ember and buy a rundown building that they fix up to be both their home and their livelihood. Ember grows up knowing that she'll eventually run the shop, although she has trouble tamping down her temper with difficult customers (who amongst us cannot relate to that?). As a young adult, Ember (Leah Lewis) is on the cusp of proving that she's ready to manage the store, but one of her hotheaded outbursts causes Wade Ripple, an emotional water guy, to get pulled in through the pipes. Wade turns out to be a government inspector, who feels duty bound to file a pile of citations, which will close the shop if they go through. Determined to keep the crisis a secret from her aging parents, Ember teams up with Wade to find a way to save the store. During their time together, they encourage each other and start to wonder whether different elements can mix, despite what they've always been taught. The take home message is to embrace those who are different from yourself, and the movie is voiced by a multi-cultural cast in case you missed the message.
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