Our main character is Ember (voiced by Leah Lewis), daughter of Bernie (Ronnie del Carmen) and Cinder (Shila Ommi). They're fire elementals. Bernie and Cinder have immigrated to Element City, where they face racism from the water, air, and earth people. But they give Ember the best life they can.

One day, Ember is running the family store when a pipe bursts in the basement. Water isn't great for fire elementals, so she seals the leak - but not before a water person ("Wade Ripple," voiced by Mamoudou Athie) pops out of the leak. He immediately starts writing tickets for code violations against their business. She tries to prevent him, and ends up pursuing him into the centre of the city where she's never really been before.

The movie is incredibly heavy-handed about racism and accepting differences between people. And the story beats about honouring your family and still finding your own path are worn slippery by the million movies that have walked this path before. And yet it's Pixar: they find joy and humour in the small moments, and manage to make an enjoyable and pretty movie despite having absolutely nothing new to say.

The "director's commentary" is with Peter Sohn (the director) and three of his technical staff, animators and the like. When Sohn talked about how the movie tied in to his own immigrant experience (growing up in a store run by his Korean parents, encountering racism), it was kind of interesting. But they spent much more of their time talking about how unusual and difficult the animation was. I don't question the truth of that, but ... those sections were kind of dull to me.