This film is both obvious and obfuscated. On the face of it, it is obviously about New York, Chicago, and other mega metropolitan areas that develop large pockets of immigants, and the problems these areas and the greater city face. But the film actually ends up traversing a lot of tropes (fish out of water, romeo and juliet, etc) in addition to this (which I’d like to call Arrival after the wonderful graphic novel, and it can seem quite complicated often what the main point is. At first I thought this was sloppiness, but it all works together rather tightly and makes me wonder if it heralds family films tackling more complex narratives. The animation is pretty cool in the film, at least in regards to the fire characters who are a mix of particulate plasma and heavy stroked features. The water characters have a very satisfying animation. The earth characters are quite disappointing, as are the air, though they at least benefit from some of the same fluidity of physical animation as do the water characters. The ending is set up quite nicely to be moving but emotionally compartmentalized. I’m quite torn over if this is a really good film or an okay one.