[Review] Soul(2020) {7.5/10}

Directed by Pete Docter and co-directed by Kemp Powers from a screenplay by Docter, Mike Jones, Kemp Powers, the film stars the voices of Jamie Foxx (Joe Gardner), Tina Fey (22), Graham Norton (Moonwind), Rachel House (Terry), Donnell Rawlings (Dez), and Angela Bassett (Dorothea Williams). Soul is the first Pixar film to feature an African-American protagonist.

The plot follows the story of Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx), a pianist who is offered a steady full-time job teaching middle school band but is ambivalent about it because he's been pursuing a professional music career for many years. On the same day he gets the job offer, Joe unexpectedly lands a plum gig playing with a famous saxophonist (Angela Bassett). Right after getting this amazing news, Joe falls into a manhole -- and the next thing he knows, his soul is on an escalator to the Great Beyond. But Joe isn't ready to go: His dream had finally come true! So he fights his way into the Great Beyond, a trippy, colorful, ethereal place where unborn souls reside until they've acquired not only the personality traits they'll have once they're assigned to a human body but also an indefinable "spark" for life. New souls are given mentors to help them prepare for their journey as humans. Joe is mistaken for a mentor and assigned to "troubled" unborn soul 22 (Tina Fey), who's outlasted hundreds of other mentors (from Gandhi and Marie Curie to Mother Theresa and Abraham Lincoln) and has yet to find her spark and earn her ticket to Earth. Joe, still obsessed with making his upcoming gig, must find a way to inspire 22 and get back to Earth.

Expectations run high from Disney Pixar films, but when Pete Docter the man behind 'Monsters Inc', 'Up' and 'Inside Out' takes on directorial duties, they take on a whole new meaning. Soul attempts to deconstruct a crucial element of what makes us human, our purpose. But it goes many steps further to explore what truly defines success for each of us. It’s these layered and intricate subjects that make it clear this isn’t just a film for kids. Soul’s jaw-dropping and photorealistic animation renders New York City and the Great Before with spectacular detail and colours, making some scenes picture perfect. The lives of the lead characters Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx) and 22 (voiced by Tina Fey) intertwine in unexpected ways. Both Foxx and Fey bring in a lot more meaning through their voice performances, as Joe inadvertently becomes a mentor to 22. Graham Norton is delightfully whacky as Moonwind while Angela Bassett is purposefully pompous as Dorothea. The message at the core of this film is that it’s perfectly fine not to have life figured out, as long as you keep trying to live it to the fullest. Soul strives to help us remember that life itself is a blessing, even when it doesn’t go as we planned. It tells us that lives of service can be just as rewarding as lives on stage. It encourages us to look at the world’s humblest things, be it a maple seed or a hunk of pizza crust, as something amazing—perhaps even miraculous in its own right. It tells us that life isn’t just a matter of a beating heart, drawing breath or shuffling through each second as if we had an eternity of them. Our lives are a gift.

Soul is now available on Disney Plus.