Mario Bahbouh
A movie that touches the soul, too cheesy I know, but can you expect anything else from Pixar? The company has made its goal to give life to everything around us: our toys, cars the fish in the sea and even the things within like our emotions.
However, in this movie they aim to tackle a different question or rather what makes that gift (life) so important that they (Pixar) have decided to give it to everyone and everything?
The movie takes on the life of Joe Gardner, a purposely average name, voiced by Jamie Fox, who works as a teacher. However, Joe has a dream of being part of a well-known Jazz team, a goal that he works really hard to achieve and is finally able to achieve after a successful audition.
Unfortunately, his life ends unexpectedly before he could play for the band. Joe then gets to experience a place that comes after life and realized that he had died. He tries to escape with all his might and ends up in a place before life in the realm of spirits where new spirits are created before they get to go to Earth.
Here, the new spirits are mentored by more ancient spirits to find a particular passion or calling before getting to experience life. Joe gets to meet 22, voiced by Tina Fey, a spirit he is to mentor despite its obvious lack of interest in anything, so will he be able to succeed?
The movie is touching with a particular resonance, after an eventful 2020, as it inspects the life of Joe and the lives of those who are career driven. Set in New York City, straying away from the traditional, overused outlook on the Concrete Jungle, which is often superficial and lacks any deepness but instead focuses on the finer details and gives those concrete buildings a soul as well.
The choice of Jazz music as a main character in the events of this movie serves the meaning quite well as Jazz music is often a raw extension of human emotions and constantly feeds off inspiration and unlike other forms of music, it involves a lot of improvisation and the courage to take on these changes.Maybe it could have been given a larger role in the sequence of events but that is just a personal opinion.
At first glance it is easy to identify the similarities between this movie and Inside Out but in my opinion, Soul is able to defeat its predecessor and fall for the same mistakes.
The actors picked to voice the characters in the movie were a correct choice and despite the fact that it's hard for an actor to really have an impact on a movie that only borrows his or her voice, some praise is due for the challenge Tina Fey took in order to portray the gender-less voice of 22.
Soul is yet another successful Pixar movie, combining the quality we have been accustomed to with some truly mature themes that some may argue is too deep for a kid but nonetheless serves as a lesson to educate them on what truly matters in this life, something many of us may have forgotten.
The movie is funny, witty, classy, surreal and offers a refreshingly unpredictable storyline, giving it a very good chance in landing an Oscar.
8/10
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