Anthony's Film Review

While Soul does deliver heartfelt messages, it's ultimately just a fun, creative, and comical adventure...

Even after 25 years of feature-length computer animated films, I still love what Pixar has to offer. One thing I especially like about Pixar is how it is increasingly spotlighting people of different cultures. A great example is Coco, centering on Mexican culture and its annual Day of the Dead. You can also find cultural themes in two notable Pixar shorts: Bao, which centers on a Chinese mother, and Sanjay's Super Team, presenting an interesting mix of American and Indian culture. Now let's add to the list the 2020 Pixar animated film Soul, centering on African Americans and jazz music.

Now, I want to be clear on one thing. Although I still consider this movie a Pixar movie based on a culture, it's not 100% tied to culture, the way Coco definitely was associated with Mexican culture from start to finish. This one is more of a mix of the cultural Pixar and the typical Pixar. In other words, the film alternates between scenes centering on African American characters and fantasy scenes that have a more universal look and feel. This is also illustrated by the two main characters: a black music teacher and aspiring jazz musician named Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx) and a soul known as Soul 22 (voiced by Tina Fey).

Let's first talk about the fantasy element of Soul. Just like with many of Pixar's previous films, there is an anthropomorphized nonhuman world with a system of rules that operate like in the human world. Here, there is a metaphysical world of souls existing somewhere away from Earth, and there are two key parts. One is for the souls of the deceased. They prepare to enter the afterlife by riding a long conveyor belt in space that takes them into a big bright light. The other part is for new baby souls, in a sort of "beforelife." This is where baby souls, each identified by a number according to how many souls existed before, explore different skills and interests to determine the one that best suits them. This is what will determine a person's natural talent once he or she is born, once the baby soul dives down to Earth.

There is an important connection between those two parts of the metaphysical world. The new souls go through their exploration process with the aid of a mentor soul, which could be any deceased soul who wishes to delay going to the afterlife in order to train a new soul. So here's where the crazy adventure begins. Back on Earth, Joe gets into an accident that doesn't quite kill him, but still forces his soul to be on that conveyor belt to the afterlife. Because he cannot accept premature death, Joe's soul escapes and ends up in the world of new souls, and in order to keep himself away from the afterlife, he volunteers to be a mentor. Unfortunately, the soul he must mentor is Soul 22 (yes, the 22nd soul ever created, way earlier than the billions after), who is the metaphysical equivalent of a disobedient child. No matter who has ever mentored her, Soul 22 still cannot discover a talent that will allow her to live on Earth.

The wacky adventure continues as Joe and 22 jump to Earth, since Joe is desperate to get back into his body. Sadly, he almost does. Joe inhabits a cat's body, while 22 inhabits Joe's body. What ensues is an awkward situation for both. It's especially desperate for Joe, because he has to tell 22 how to behave in a way that makes him appear as normal as if he were back in his body. Now, it's not like other people would suspect a case of body-swapping. Even though Joe the cat hears the child voice of 22 from his own body, and 22 hears Joe's voice from the cat, every other person just hears Joe's voice from Joe and a cat's voice from the cat. This creates some rather interesting moments, particularly one where Joe, controlled by 22, has a heartfelt talk with his mother.

Basically, the story of Soul is mainly a funny adventure of two characters being in the wrong bodies. If you're looking for some meaningful messages or insightful commentary, there's a bit of that here, too. But I wouldn't say it's anything really insightful like with certain other Pixar movies. If anything, there's really just one takeaway message for each of the two characters and that's it. They sound fairly simple, but it's still nice to be reminded of them so that we could apply them to our own lives.

Pixar has made good movies from the start, ranging from good to awesome, with few exceptions that are average in my opinion. For me, Soul would be in between the OK movie and the spectacular movie. It's simply a pretty good movie. It's creative, humorous, and just plain fun. And it's a nice way to remind us that life is precious and that we should make the best of it.

Anthony's Rating:

For more information about Soul, visit the Internet Movie Database.