Fire, water spark an animated romance

 

   In a time of multiverses and multiplying identities, it's hardly surprising that Pixar has jumped into a world in which characters must learn to confront their prejudices.

   Elemental, Pixar's latest animated feature, offers a story about lovers who, on the surface, don't seem made for each other.

   Under the guidance of director Peter Sohn, Pixar serves Elemental's major hunk of symbolism with a heavy hand, creating an obstacle-strewn romance between (ready for this?) fire and water.

    Fire appears in the form of Ember Lumen (Leah Lewis), a flaming orange creature who's about to inherit a store operated by her father (Ronnie Del Carmen) and her mother (Shila Ommi). 

   The Lumen family are immigrants in Element City, a whimsically realized urban center divided into neighborhoods occupied by creatures inspired by four elements: earth, air, water, and fire. 

   Fire and water begin to mix when Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie),  a hunky bubble of a character, turns up in Firetown. Fire and water aren't compatible, which means the movie must work overtime to show that different ethnicities don't necessarily doom a developing romantic relationship between Amber and Wade.

    When Pop Lumen's store springs a water leak, Wade, a city inspector, offers to help Ember meet a deadline to set things straight; she has one week to correct the situation. 

   To further complicate the story, Amber, who's prone to incendiary bursts of temper, isn't eager to take over the family business. She has her own dreams.

   The animation is mostly fanciful. The voice work engages. Even a wobbly approach to a stream of ethnic/racial themes proves workable -- if not deeply explored.

    In a major set piece -- every animated movie needs one -- Amber visits an underwater garden from which she and other fire people previously had been banned. The movie thus leaps into additional trendy terrain: Systemic prejudice works against the fulfillment of individual dreams.

    Although it benefits from an eclectic musical score by Thomas Newman, Elemental may not rank among Pixar's best. Still, it's passable, particularly for younger audiences. Fire notwithstanding, the movie is more likely to tug the heart strings than leave audience suffering from heartburn. 

    Strained heat references on my part, but, hey, we’re talking the visually complex and thematically crammed world of Elemental.

    Maybe I'm too literal minded but the movie's central metaphor struck me as suspect. The next time something burns, I doubt that love and acceptance will leap to mind. I'll be calling for the firehoses.

The dinosaurs roar; ‘Dominion’ doesn’t

   

   Giant genetically engineered locusts ravage midwestern crops, a greedy corporation poses as humanity’s techno savior — and, oh yeah, dinosaurs roam the earth. 

  Donning a threadbare ecological mantle, Jurassic World Dominion rambles for roughly two and half hours, alternating action sequences, exposition, and a trio of plot threads. 

    Despite the presence of Laura Dern, Sam Neill, and Jeff Goldblum echoes of the original movie prove feeble, and an uninspired story leaves Jurassic World regulars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard with little do but gawk at the CGI creatures.

    Pratt and Howard play characters who spend the movie trying to rescue a kidnapped duo —a baby T-rex and a cloned 15-year-old girl (Isabelle Sermon).  Biosyn, an evil corporation that operates out of Italy's Dolomites, wants to exploit the pair for profit — or some such.

   Sermon’s Maisie was created by her late mother, a scientist who fashioned her from an altered version of her own DNA.

    Director Colin Trevorrow keeps the production from looking as meager as its ideas, providing some of the expected jolts, one from a creature billed as the world’s largest carnivore.

    Not surprisingly, many of the human characters stare directly into gaping, toothy dinosaur mouths and do what people in such situations are expected to do; i.e., scream at the top of their lungs.

    If you’ve seen all the Jurassic World movies, you know the environment that the movie inherits is one in which some of the dinosaurs are cute, at least in so much as large reptiles can be considered adorable.

    A few additions put a bit of spring in the movie's thudding steps. DeWanda Wise signs on as a freewheeling woman who winds up working to defeat the evil corporation. Mamoudou Athie plays Biosyn’s affable communications officer. Dichen Lachman portrays a woman involved in the illegal dinosaur trade, and Campbell Scott portrays the duplicitous head of Biosyn. 

    In these blockbuster-starved days (Top Gun Maverick being the exception), Dominion may do well at the box office — at least initially. Although not nearly as lame as it could have been, the movie drags its tattered carcass through several possible endings. 

   Only the dinosaurs, a bit minimized in importance here, give the movie any roar. I’m speaking literally. They're very loud.

   Otherwise, Dominion rehashes familiar themes about the dangers of tampering with nature and pushes its characters through situations that breathe little new life into an already depleted franchise.

Can she rap her way out of Jersey?

Gritty and energetic, Patti Cake$ gives Danielle Macdonald a breakout role.

It's important to know that Patti Cake$, a movie about the emergence of a female rapper, takes place in the lower-class depths of New Jersey. First-time writer/director Geremy Jasper understands that for some folks, Jersey can be the place that nurtures them and the place they most want to escape. This dual pull infuses Patti Cake$ with dynamism.

Jasper tells the story of Patti Dombrowski, played by Australian actress Danielle Macdonald. A heavy-set young woman, Patti dreams of shaking the world with her rap lyrics.

It's easy to accuse Patti Cake$ of being a formula job about a no-name woman who tries to buck the odds and make it big. It's also fair. Patti Cake$ qualifies as a kind of a rap Rocky built around a female character who's taunted by neighborhood jerks who derisively call her "Dumbo," a nickname she's been saddled with since childhood.

Fortunately, there's more to Patti Cake$ than the formula suggests. Among other things, it introduces audiences to Macdonald, who brings swagger, pathos and an ability to rap to the screen.

At 23, Macdonald's Patti calls herself "Killa-P" or "Patti Cake$," alter egos that help her survive the hard life to which she has been assigned.

So let's be clear. I'm not a rap enthusiast, but I recognize that rap requires a significant skill set: the ability to rhyme, the ability to create a narrative -- and, perhaps above all, a vocal dexterity that can turn a voice into an instrument of street poetry, blunt assertion, and staccato riffs.

I've read that Macdonald never had rapped before landing the part. I don't know who schooled her in the fine points of rapping, but she's plenty convincing as the driving force behind a group called PBNJ, initials derived from peanut butter and New Jersey.

Joining Patti in PBNJ are Hareesh (Siddharth Dhananjay) and a character who dubs himself Bastard the Antichrist (Mamoudou Athie). A strange, nearly silent dude, Bastard lives in a shack in the woods and provides music and rhythms for the group.

Jasper mixes kitchen-sink grit and fairy tale aspiration to create a movie of power and pulse.

Patti, who works as a bar tender, lives with her mother (Bridget Everett) and her ailing grandmother (Cathy Moriarty). Mom, who once aspired to be a singer, drinks too much and relies on Patti to help keep the family afloat financially. Mom also makes fun of Patti's dreams.

But Mom is an alcoholic with a twist; she actually can sing; her abilities come into play during the film's appropriately rousing finale.

Populated by the aging and embittered, the bar in which Patti works stands as a metaphor for dead-end Jersey lives that wind up stewing in a shot-and-a-beer world they'll never escape and which Patti longs to flee.

Patti's role model is a rapper and impresario known as O-Z (Sahr Ngaujah), a member of rap royalty who lives like a pasha in a beautifully appointed home where Patti finds herself working a party after landing a catering job. Patti decides to take a chance and rap for O-Z, who cruelly dismisses her, accusing her of being a "culture vulture," a white person who appropriates black culture for their own purposes. I wish the movie had allowed for a little more reflection about that, but it clearly sets up O-Z as a rap elitist, one more obstacle for Patti to overcome.

The movie soothes some of the sting of cultural appropriation because "Bastard" is black and because Hareesh, who works in a pharmacy, has Middle Eastern roots. PBNJ is a multi-cultural experience.

Audiences pretty much will know where Patti Cake$ is headed, but its familiar path is paved with a Jersey spirit that's reinforced by the introduction of a Bruce Springsteen song during the end credits.

Not surprisingly, the movie ends at a contest in Newark where wannabe rap stars square off against one another. It's a fitting denouement for a movie that, like its main character, succeeds in firmly planting its feet and announcing, "I'm here. Deal with it."

In the movie, the period in the preceding sentence probably would be followed by a profane exclamation point, a word beginning with "m" and ending with "rs." And, yes, there's an "f" in the middle.