Soul: Movie Review

Cast: Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Rachel House

Director: Pete Docter

Pixar's Soul is the latest Disney movie to suffer an existential crisis.

Not just in the way that it's being premiered on Disney+ over Christmas after Covid-19 denied it its time to shine in the cinema, but also thematically with its somewhat simplistic and overtly obvious message of stop and smell the flowers.

Foxx plays Joe, a middle-aged middle school band teacher, who yearns to play jazz in the clubs. But life has denied him his break, and things get even worse on the day he ends up receiving success. For as soon as Joe is given a full-time job and scores a gig with a well-known jazz singer (Angela Bassett), he promptly falls to his near death by plummeting down a manhole in New York's streets.

Waking up in another realm, The Great Before, Joe's desperate to return to Earth - but ends up becoming a mentor to a listless soul called 22 (30 Rock's Tina Fey) who has yet to discover their purpose in life...

There's much to admire with Soul.

It starts off wonderfully pacy and a little bit out there by seemingly killing off its lead. Thrust into another world, complete with its Cubist characters and concepts such as shaping souls in the Great Before, as well as tackling going into the light, the film's dalliances with the existential and the spiritual is enough to send any adult meandering through life closer to the edge.

But then after about 40 minutes, a kind of Pixar universal reality sets in, and the filmmakers remember they're making family fare, and the whole thing comes back down to earth with a glorious jolt and into more familiar refrains and cartoon tropes.

That's not to deny Soul its due - it's a fairly robust odd couple film that's been done to death a million times before. However, imbued with its hues and etheral colourings, there's a vibrancy to the animation that sings as much as the jazz music scats. 

Yet, there is a feeling that the film could have pushed its edges a little more, rather than settling into the usual tropes, no matter how well executed. As a film with a cast largely filled by people of colour, and with praise for the African-American influence on the country's culture, there's daring to be had within the frames of Pixar's latest.

It's a shame Soul has been denied a big screen release thanks to lush animation, and daring concepts brought to life; complete with its desire to push viewers into an existential crisis, it would have soared on the big screen.

But alas, Soul is confined to Disney+, and while it's not a disaster, it is a travesty that a viral outbreak has robbed the cinemas of something a little more challenging and beauteous to behold.

While there is plenty of soul in Soul, and a rather simplistic learning to be had, there's much enjoyment from its weirder edges early on. Its unpredictability is its charm, and its trippiness is a great benefit with the animation paying homage to previous expressions of the artform.

At one stage, one character says “You can’t crush a soul here. That’s what Earth is for.” Soul is aimed at promoting a message of appreciating what you've got in the now, and after 2020, that's probably the soothing message we all needed, no matter how unoriginal it is, nor how well the story is presented.

Soul premieres on Disney+ on Boxing Day.