Anthomation Assesses Soul

Howdy guys, Anthomaton here. Today I shall review the latest gem in the Pixar archive, Soul.

Soul is a 2020 animated film produced by the aforementioned Pixar animation studios. The film was directed by Pixar veteran and current Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter. He has directed many fantastic films such as Up (2009), Monsters Inc. (2001) and Inside Out (2014). Soul is the first Pixar film to feature an African-American protagonist. Originally intended to be a theatrical release in the United States, the film was released to stream on Disney+ on December 25, 2020 and was theatrically released in countries without the streaming service. It became the first feature-length film from Pixar not to be given a wide theatrical release and the first to be billed as a Disney+ original film. The film received highly positive reviews from critics with praise for its animation, story, voice acting, and music.

Joe Gardner is a middle-school band teacher whose life hasn’t quite gone the way he expected. His true passion is jazz — and he’s good. But when he travels to another realm to help a soul, named 22, find their passion, he soon discovers what it means to have a soul.

The story of this film not only is beaming with creativity, but it knows how to use that element to its full advantage. First of all, the world that the souls reside in is layed out quite nicely as the souls are created with specific personality traits and sent down to earth to someone who is about to be born. This is known as the great before. There’s also the Great Beyond, where the souls of dead people go to dissolve in a great white abyss. This is where Inside Out meets Coco (2017). Speaking of the former, the one nitpick I tend to hear from other people who have seen this film is that the narrative closely emulates the narrative of the mind movie. While there are some similarities between the two films, this movie in particular has more than enough heart and passion to not be an Inside Out ripoff. My favorite element of the film is when Joe Gardner is playing on his piano and he becomes one with the jazz as the animation bursts with colors and movement. It’s like Soul decided to find its inner Fantasia (1940). Any film that I can remotely compare to Fantasia has my blessing.

The animation is absolutely wonderful and enormously vivid. The visuals range from detailed and realistic in the real world in which Joe Gardner originally reside in to abstract and original in the world of the souls. Specifically, the backgrounds of the real world are precisely articulated to the finest grain of asphalt to the stain on glass windows. What separates it from full on motion capture is that the humans, specifically their heads, are very stylized. In fact, Joe’s head looks like a football with a face. In the opposite direction, the souls have a basic, but effective design and the world itself has a great use of line and symmetry. It’s a wide range of visuals that create not one, but two elaborate settings that are a pleasure to the human eye.

The characters are extremely likeable and initially grab the attention of the audience. Our protagonist is named by Joe Gardner (voiced by Jaime Foxx), a passionate jazz pianist and music teacher whose soul gets separated from his body after an open manhole accident. There is 22 (voiced by Tina Fey), a soul trapped in the Great Before with a dim view of life. There’s Terry, the soul counter in the great beyond who tries to get Joe’s soul to go to the great beyond. Though, he fails as Joe continues to dodge him on his quest to cheat death and return to his human body. And then there is Dorothea Williams, a respected jazz musician and saxophone player. It is her band that Joe tries and succeeds to join before his unfortunate accident. The characters are presented with great care and are easily rootable. 

Pixar, you have done again. The animation is fantastic, ranging from realistic to stylized, the characters are well-constructed, and the story has so much emotional integrity. It is just a well-thought-out film and the best animated film of 2020.

Score:

8/10