Disney’s “Soul” is an excellent movie, right off the bat. I’m not the best reviewer, so if you read my review and decide “eh, doesn’t sound like my cup of tea,” just watch it anyway based on my goodwill.
The movie takes place in New York City and follows music teacher Joe (Jamie Foxx) as he struggles to reunite with his true passion — music. At the beginning of the movie, Joe encounters a terrible accident that puts him in a coma while he is on his way to an important tryout for a local jazz group. He wakes up in what appears to be an alternate reality in the form of a blob, and is surrounded by other blobs. While trying to figure out where he is, Joe falls into yet another space outside of the waking realm.
This is point one I want to bring up — the animation in this film is astounding. All of the scenes that take place in the so-called alternate dimension are beautifully designed, and the style is honestly breathtaking at times. Disney really pulled out all the stops with their animation on this one. Even if you don’t want to watch the whole movie, I highly recommend at least looking at stills, because I cannot do it true justice with just words.
While in this other world, a group of vague deities, (if you can even call them that, ) collectively named Jerry (Alice Braga, Richard Ayoade and Wes Studi) find Joe and explain where — and what — he is. This alternate dimension happens to be where souls are formed, trained and eventually released into the world as new babies are born. All new souls undergo training and are usually ready to go after they have completed their tasks; that is, except for soul 22 (Tina Fey).
In order to complete their training, 22 and Joe are paired to discover their true passions and are released into the world. While Joe tries to regroup and try out once again for the jazz group, he and 22 butt heads over their life choices because of their personalities as they try to go through the motions of life. By the end of the movie, both souls have grown as characters. I don’t want to spoil too much, so I’ll leave it at that.
Point two I wanted to bring up: “Soul” is an incredibly deep movie, as one of the themes is the meaning of life and how people’s personalities and souls are formed. It also features the theme of death and afterlife, all of which are very heavy topics for a children’s film. However, directors Peter Docter and Kemp Powers do a great job of attempting to navigate a version of what happens both before and after you are born.
Their depictions and explanations of both a life before birth and a life after death are artfully done and are fairly secular views, which are refreshing to find in movies attempting to deal with these themes. I really enjoyed the descriptions and portrayals of these realms, I’ll call them, and I think they are really cool and unique perspectives.
Additionally, one of the other main themes is life passions, as evidenced through the souls’ training and Joe’s attempts at reviving his passion for music. The souls in the movie have wide and varied passions, which reinforces to viewers that nothing is too unimportant or irrelevant to their lives if it’s something they truly enjoy.
Overall, I really liked this movie, and I think it might have made its way into one of my top spots for Disney movies (at least for their traditional, animated ones). I highly suggest you watch it; “Soul” can be found on Disney Plus, YouTube, Vudu, Google Play Movies & TV and Amazon Prime Video.
