Soul

The grand Disney tradition of anthropomorphizing every possible thing—from animals and toys to musical notes and computer programs, to childhood fears and adolescent emotions—finally reaches its limit in the latest Pixar creation. Soul, a rare one-word movie title where the double meaning succeeds in encapsulating the picture, tells the story of a middle-aged jazz musician named Joe (Jamie Foxx) who has “settled” for making his living as a part-time high school band teacher but still dreams of playing professionally. When Joe’s life is cut short right before the big break he’s been waiting for, he gets transported to an other-worldly realm and paired up with a new soul named 22 (Tina Fey) who refuses to start her life on Earth. 

Everything the Pixar team pulled off with such astounding dexterity in two of their recent films—Inside Out (2015), which created a profoundly moving story from the hackneyed concept of treating the human brain as a control tower overseen by five personified emotions, and Coco (2017), which explored issues no less weighty than life and death via the delicate blending of cultures that would seem to have antithetical perspectives on those subjects—falls flat in Soul. Just as in those earlier movies, Soul takes place both in the real world and in an imagined world. Like Coco, that imagined world is a kind of afterlife (or a “before-life” in this case). Like Inside Out, that imagined world functions like a giant factory that’s well ordered but still prone to human error. The soft, round, colorful depictions of souls in Soul even resemble (far too closely) the emotion characters in Inside Out.

Though Soul comes from Pete Doctor, the same co-writer/director who helmed Inside Out (as well as Monsters, Inc. another story focused on an otherworldly factory that manufactures elements of the human subconscious), it is surprising to see such a derivative Pixar film. Even the sequels from this studio usually surprise and delight with their level of originality. But Soul presents its spiritual and otherworldly plains in much the same way we’ve seen in countless films—from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death (1946), to the various versions and rip-offs of Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) and Heaven Can Wait (1978), to Albert Brooks’s Defending Your Life (1991). And, unlike the vast, imaginative fantasy worlds depicted in Inside Out and Coco, the world beyond the Earth in Soul amounts to little more than a 2-dimensional EPCOT center where pre-humans are programmed with various traits and interests before descending to the mortal coil. We’re reminded, by strong contrasts, how effectively and astutely adolescent behaviour was reduced to five basic emotions in Inside Out, while watching the shallow and simplistic portrayal of how personalities are formed in Soul. 

The problems with Soul are not limited to its imitative and reductive qualities. This is the most relentlessly paced Pixar film since the exasperating (and inexplicably popular) Finding Nemo (2003). The characters here rarely slow down to catch their breath and reflect on their situation. When they do, they seem to be under constant pressure to get out of an immediate jam, even when occupying a realm where time and space are not factors. The stakes—ranging from impossibly high (literally trying to evade death) to absurdly low (trying to deal with pants ripping at the butt)—all carry the exact same weight. Long-standing convictions and motivations of several characters make 180 degree flips as a result of the most inconsequential interactions or lines of dialogue—witness the turn-on-a-dime transformation of Joe’s disapproving mother (Phylicia Rashad) who suddenly becomes supportive of her middle-aged son’s dreams because… I still don’t know why. He spoke up for himself? He reminded her of his late father, maybe? 

Worst of all, most of the spectacularly unfunny humor interrupts the narrative action and undercuts the film’s internal logic rather than growing organically out of it. Many of the jokes are of the flash-cut-to-what’s-in-the-character’s-head sort that I thought was played-out in the ‘90s. Glib jokes and comical asides continuously discredit the already flimsily constructed inner workings of Soul’s otherworldly realm. (Doesn’t Doctor want us to believe in the world he created rather than constantly undermine it for the sake of a cheap laugh?) And these wisecracks are delivered in a uniform style across all the characters—be they the frantic protagonists going through life-altering changes, the otherworldly beings whose day-to-day existence is barely ever altered, or the Earthbound humans who have no concept what’s happening in this story.

When the Pixar folks succeed (and they succeed far more often than I would expect) they create films where each joke, narrative beat, and thematic point are simultaneously entertaining for kids and emotionally resonant for adults without resorting to the “this line's for the kiddies / this line's for the grown-ups” approach of so many contemporary animated features. It’s obvious, especially in Inside Out, that early-childhood expert are brought in to consult on the scripts, yet the final films rarely feel tinged by the superficial pop-psychology of their eras. But what childhood expert signed off on this picture? I can’t imagine what I would have made of Soul if I had seen it as a 10-year-old, or younger. I know I'd have been utterly confused and frustrated.

Pixar’s greatest film, Toy Story 3, also explores existential midlife crisis themes, but it does so through the brilliant use of characters that are easily relatable to kids. While there might be some precocious tweens out there who can feel empathy for Joe—an unmotivated, childless-dad-type who spends his days teaching unmotivated generic-youth-types—I can’t fathom how any kid could relate to the character of 22 or her dilemma (maybe insufferable stubbornness is enough to have in common?). The smug yet generic characters in the realm beyond Earth do even less to endear themselves, and the pseudo-psychedelic “before-world” they inhabit looks more like a brightly colored Amazon warehouse than the ultimate world’s fair of personalities it’s meant to suggest. 

As expected, the Pixar folks render the real world in a thrillingly exaggerated but lifelike way, in which physical objects look almost photorealistic but human characters never cross into the uncanny valley. Especially impressive is the depiction of Joe’s piano playing. The way his nimble fingers dance across the keyboard appears simultaneously authentic and magical. The film also features a terrific score, but, like everything else, the depiction of music gets cut far too rapidly. We’re never allowed to disappear into any of the tunes long enough for the movie to convey the power of Jazz or understand why Joe fell in love with it. Even a sequence meant to illustrate the very act of a musician getting into the groove zips by far too quickly. Thus Soul comes up short on the very qualities that should make it unique among animated offerings.