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What is it that makes you...YOU? Soul introduces Joe Gardner (voice of Jamie Foxx) – a middle-school band teacher who gets the chance of a lifetime to play at the best jazz club in town. But one small misstep takes him from the streets of New York City to The Great Before – a fantastical place where new souls get their personalities, quirks and interests before they go to Earth. Determined to return to his life, Joe teams up with a precocious soul, 22 (voice of Tina Fey), who has never understood the appeal of the human experience. As Joe desperately tries to show 22 what’s great about living, he may just discover the answers to some of life’s most important questions. (Walt Disney US)
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Although it was expected this time, it’s never been more painful to see the way creators are forced to compromise. The purely adult material is diluted by a child’s perspective that doesn’t fit the coherence of the story as smoothly as in the past. Think about this: Coco sent a normal young boy into a symbolic world of existential ideas, taking him through a visually captivating environment where he learnt through his own childish perspective, all lead by funny fictional protagonists who told an intellectually dense story in the style of a circus attraction. Soul, in contrast, has an adult protagonist who envisages a more mature view of the world and who remains an adult even while his soul is in a symbolic environment. It’s therefore clear that this film is meant mostly for adults, and it’s naturally hurt by the fact that the story follows pretty much expected paths and ends so contrived and lacking conflict. The world-building is great and the story is nice to watch, but it can never be fun, silly, or inspiring enough when everything is so broadly aimed at solid family well-being. It’s not a bad movie, it’s just lacklustre and rather rushed, which is quite surprising for Pixar. 70%
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I once knew a girl who had "Don't wait, live!" tattooed on her in that stupid curly font, and I'm convinced this is gonna be her very favorite movie. Soul is the perfectly animated combination of a paid therapy session and esoteric life-coaching, and a packet of Xanax will spontaneously appear in the cabinet behind your sink after you finish watching it. I'm giving it three stars for the sheer amount of animated closeups in the New York streets, and also because I expect more animated films with a similar message from Docter, so I need somewhere to drop my rating in the future. PS: notice how Pixar has been repeating the exact same jokes for ten years now
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Pixar knows how to captivate, entertain and move the audience at the same time and Soul is another example that the "lamp" studio can serve up some truly amazing pieces. From a technical point of view, it is a breathtaking audio-visual spectacle, brimming with amazingly polished animation and a wonderful soundtrack. I appreciate the artistic depiction of the world of souls and its various characters, from the newly born souls, to (J/T)erry, to the sadly terrifying lost souls that reminded me of characters from Miyazaki's films. Pete Docter has breathed life (and soul) into another original world, one that evokes his previous film, Inside Out, yet is different in many ways. Story-wise, this is a very mature film that explores the meaning of our lives and their very nature, which is certainly not a foregone conclusion. While Inside Out and Coco grabbed my heart a wee bit more, Soul still deserves that full rating from me.
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This has just the right soul. It’s playful, creative, original and everything is nicely underpinned by excellent music. But still, I felt it was missing something that would have helped me get better acquainted with the characters and I would have expected more of the same ideas that were hinted at the end.
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It’s stiffly nice and it may take a little too much time to cut to the chase, but once it settles into its pleasantly adult and slightly surreal tone, it has moments of near-miraculousness. Pixar growing up is a good thing. It had a childishly playful core in its head, but this is more about adult creativity and the very personal theme of finding meaning and anchoring in the life that passes through the main character's hands. It's good that Pixar has abandoned the anthropomorphizing of nonsense for kids and started having a dialogue with parents in midlife crisis. God knows we need a caress like that more than our kids.
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Photo © Walt Disney Pictures
![Soul - Photos](http://image.pmgstatic.com/cache/resized/w663/files/images/film/photos/163/949/163949612_665376.jpg)
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