Soul // Review #11

(*Sigh*)

Okay, so I finally watched the Disney/Pixar movie, Soul.

And to make a long review short, I didn’t like it.

My brother originally wanted to watch this movie a long time ago because he was told by his friends that this movie was inspiring and life- changing. So, we watched it together over this past weekend. 

And… I was disappointed, to say the least. That’s not to say that I was expecting this Disney/Pixar film to utterly change my life or anything, but I was at least hoping to feel something instead of intense apathy and exhaustion by the time it was over. 

Let me explain:

You may or may not know this, but I am currently experiencing what is known to as a "quarter-life crisis," in which everything in my life seems to be frustrating and uncertain. Things like relationships and job prospects are all really hard for me to navigate right now. Knowing this information, you would think that a movie like Soul, in which the main character is trying to fulfill his dream even though he’s (literally) got one foot in the grave, would speak to me on some intimate level. You would think that someone like me, who is currently going through it (as the kids say), would relate all too well to someone like Joe for this particular reason, as he attempts to find his purpose in life. 

But au contraire! I did not!

Listen, I didn’t think Soul was a bad movie, per say, but for someone who went into this movie with moderate to high hopes, I will say that I was not exactly moved by this film. If anything, I was annoyed by it and slightly anxious for it to be over.

However, that's not to say that the film doesn't have its merits. (SPOILERS FOR SOUL, BY THE WAY)

Let’s start with the things I liked. 

Category 1: Diversity- B-

First of all, I liked that this movie was black. Unapologetically black, actually, which I appreciated. There was something delightfully real about Joe and his family in this movie, and it was in everything from the occasional side-eye from Dorothea to Joe having to kiss his auntie every time he sees her as a sign of respect. I fully got the impression that the creators of this movie understood how to depict black culture. Even getting notable actors like Jamie Foxx and Phylicia Rashad to play Joe and his mama was a solid casting choice. I really appreciated the human elements of the movie in which we as the audience got to see Joe’s neighborhood and how he interacts with those around him. Seeing his barber for example, was a nice touch, and elaborating on how he and his mom don’t see eye to eye was cool.

I even liked the scenes with Joe teaching his music class at the beginning, especially because it felt real and it was a real opportunity for the movie to show us who Joe was exactly and what he was all about.

That was good stuff. That was one of the strongest aspects of the movie.

That being said, it cannot be overlooked that this is the first Pixar film starring a black lead, and yet most of the film had the voice actor for this black lead voicing a blue blob or a cat instead. 

Which leads me into one of my main complaints about the film-

Category 2: Body Swap Horror- F (for “Fully Unnecessary,” again)

Midway through this movie, the main character, Joe, and an emerging soul known as 22 end up back on earth after seeing the Great Before. Somehow, through some shenanigans and some tomfoolery, this results in Joe, a black man, ending up in the body of a cat, while 22 (played by the white Tina Fey) ends up inside of Joe, the aforementioned black man's body.

By this point in the film I was tired.

Not only was I disappointed and a little annoyed that Pixar had the nerve to put another person of color into a situation where they're transformed into an animal so they learn their lesson (because it's a whole problematic trope in animation, especially with Disney films. I made a list on Letterboxd if you were curious.), but I was also just... unimpressed with the plot device as a whole because it seemed unnecessary.

Princess Tiana and Prince Naveen as frogs (left) and again as humans (right) from The Princess and the Frog (2009).

At least in The Princess and the Frog, the whole, "turning the main character into an animal" aspect of the movie was plot relevant because of the existence of voodoo in the universe. It was plausible and fun to watch because it implied that there was magic in this world, no matter how nefarious it may seem.

The Princess and the Frog also didn't throw me because  the original source material of the The Frog Princess already had a person transforming from a frog into a prince, and so it wasn't so outlandish and annoying when it happened in the movie (although it's still a little suspicious that they made the only black princess the one that transforms into an animal, but still).

Soul was different, though. They didn't just transform the human character into an animal- they fully swapped the human character with the non-human character for laughs, leaving the human character, who happens to be black, sidelined, trapped in the body of a cat.

In all fairness, I will say that there is a slight similarity between this aspect of Soul and an aspect of The Princess and the Frog. The closest thing that relates to this element of body swap horror in The Princess and the Frog are the scenes in which (SPOILER for The Princess and the Frog) Lawrence, the prince's lowly servant, pretends to be the prince by essentially donning blackface and putting on a charade. However, I will still argue that this is not as egregious or even as problematic as the Soul body swap was. 

Joe Gardner inside of Mr. Mittens the cat and 22 inside of Joe Gardner (played by Jaime Foxx and Tina Fey respectively)

For one thing, the frogs in The Princess and the Frog were not hanging around Lawrence attempting to coach him on how to be a prince as he impersonates Prince Naveen. In that movie, it was funny to watch Lawrence because he was a bumbling idiot who didn't know what he was doing, and he was very clearly the bad guy. Meanwhile, in Soul, Joe essentially had to coach 22 on how to be black throughout their daily interactions, and since they were both the heroes of the story, Pixar wasn't trying to be problematic in order to make their heroes look bad. Yet somehow, they were. 

It didn't matter that the people in the movie could only hear Joe's voice when 22 spoke- we as the audience knew it was Tina Fey, and so it essentially felt like Jamie Foxx giving Tina Fey a lesson on "how to be black" and I wasn't here for it.

The whole thing felt yucky to me, and it left me waiting for this portion of the movie to be over (even though it went on for a solid 20-30 minutes). 

I think the thing that bothered me the most about this aspect of Soul was that the person learning the lesson during this sequence was not Joe, but 22 in Joe's body. During this sequence, 22 was walking around admiring everything in the body of this man that she had no claim or right to. We spend most of our time on her arc throughout the film, which was annoying to me.

Joe may have reflected a little bit during his time as a cat, like he did when 22 spoke with the barber and when he spoke with his mother through 22, but the movie really wants you to worry about what 22 learned during her time on Earth. And I just couldn't get behind it.

I felt like Tina Fey had essentially hijacked this black man's body and character development, meanwhile the actual main character was relegated to a silly side gag.

If they really wanted to keep this stupid idea in the movie, they should have at least made Joe another person. The whole mix up that arises with Joe ending up in the body of another person is due to a kind old lady leaving her therapy cat on Joe's lap as he's in the hospital. In my rewrite, we would nix the old lady and her cat and put Joe into the body of another human person who had just vacated their body after they recently passed (a la Drop Dead Diva). (By the way, if you haven't heard of Drop Dead Diva, you should check out my other review that includes body-swapping horror, Wonder Woman 1984, where I go on about it for way too long.)

This would alleviate any of the previous concerns about turning him into an animal for a gag, and then the movie becomes a Freaky Friday mashup in which Joe and 22 have to get Joe back into his body or he'll be stuck inside this other person forever (It could even be another black person!). It would have even been better, to me, if Joe got to see the world through someone else's eyes in this case while 22 tagged along. Have this person's family come up to him and tell him how happy they are they he's alive. Have Joe get swept up and go to this person's job. At least then I would've felt like Joe had learned something about life and purpose and all that other crap he was so hung up on.

Anyway, I guess my main point here is that body-swap horror is problematic as hell unless you're referring to Freaky Friday (2003) or Drop Dead Diva.

Category 3: Plot- C

I was so worked up about the unnecessary body swapping element of the story that I got ahead of myself and failed to mention what the plot of this movie even is. Let's rewind.

Soul is the story of a middle aged man named Joe Gardner who is currently a middle school music teacher, but his dream is to become one of the greatest musicians jazz has ever heard of. Just as he's about to get his big break, however, he dies.

After Joe dies, he is transported (through shenanigans) to the Great Before instead of the Great Beyond. There, he is confused with someone who lived a worthy life (a la season one of The Good Place) and is tasked with mentoring a young soul before they reach Earth. In comes 22, a rambunctious soul who has no interest in becoming a person or even being on Earth. They need each other, though, because... plot?

Overall the plot was somehow too complicated and metaphysical for me to care about it, while also being outlandishly dumb (like, you mean to tell me that they couldn't figure out that Joe wasn't this renowned child psychologist that they immediately mistook him for, despite looking nothing like him even in the afterlife? Also, you mean to tell me that Joe is the first person ever to want off of the conveyor belt to the Great Beyond? Really?).

Aside from the problems that I had with the whole body-swapping plot device, I also couldn't really get into the plot as a whole. Perhaps it's just because I'm not a big jazz fan, or maybe it's because I wasn't super invested in Joe as a character, but there was never a point where I was sucked into this movie. I was just... sitting through it.

It probably didn't help that this movie didn't end in a satisfying way for me. We never resolve the whole conflict that Joe had at the beginning of the film with disliking his job, and we never see 22 ever again after she’s out on earth. I know that statistically it’s unlikely for Joe to run into 22, but I think that it would be a nice little nod to the audience if the two of them got to meet up again. 

For example, what if there was a baby born in a hospital where Joe was doing some sort of charity concert with his school, or what if years later Joe ran into a child that reminded him of 22, and he smiled?

OR! 

Even better, what if Joe wound up teaching 22 in his middle school class even further on and then they did an internal reveal to show that it was 22 inside of this twelve year old kid the whole time? That ending would have made me feel something as opposed to the apathy I felt at the corny “you get a second chance at life, so you better go live it” thing.

The ending may have seemed good on paper, but even an epilogue where we see what the rest of Joe’s life was like after he came back to earth would have felt sweeter and more earned, to me.

Category 4: Animation- A

Talk about an easy A. 

As always, the animation is where this movie really shines for me. I especially liked the Picasso-esque beings of Terry and the Jerrys. I really appreciated how they moved despite having no arms or legs (especially Terry when she moved throughout the real world.) I also feel like this movie played with space in an interesting way- both literally and figuratively.

That said, because a lot of the "real world" animation is grounded in ordinary New York City, the colors can seem a little flat at times. The animation is clearly well done, but in a photo-realistic way that's not immediately eye catching because of the setting where the film takes place. Of course the animation was lovely, but it wasn't as exciting or different to look at like some of the other Disney/Pixar films, like Ratatouille or Coco.

Despite my criticisms of the movie as a whole though, Soul managed to win a Best Animated Feature Oscar earlier this year, so the Disney/Pixar animation department has to be doing something right. They even beat themselves out for the other animated movie that they released in 2020, Onward.

Category 5: Themes- D

For me, the themes are where this movie really fell apart.

The theme of Soul isn’t exactly the clearest thing in the world, and again that has to do with the fact that the ending sucks. Like, I can see what they were trying to get the theme of the movie to be, but without a solid story structure, the theme doesn’t quite work as well.

Let's see if we can figure out where exactly the thread of this movie gets lost.

Joe was unhappy with his job at the start of the movie and threatening to not accept a good job offer because his dreams were more important than making decent money. His mother essentially tells him, "BOY, I thought I told you to accept that job" (paraphrasing, obviously). He ignores her and goes to an audition to become a jazz musician with a local band. He passes the audition, and on his way home- he dies.

Okay. Simple so far, right?

Here's where things take a turn.

As soon as Joe dies, things get muddy. This movie's no longer about following your dreams no matter how impractical they are, or even working hard to support yourself so that eventually you can follow your dreams.

As soon as Joe reaches the Great Before, the movie becomes about what your "Spark" is, and how your "Spark" is different from your (capital P) "Purpose." Joe thinks these two things are synonymous, and he believes that he was put on God's green earth to play jazz.

Which is... already too deep for me, dawg.

Like- your mama told you to stick with the stable teaching position, and I'm going to have to agree with her. Like, damn.

They could have went so many different ways with the messaging for this movie, but the way that they went in the end was weak and unsatisfying.

The theme of this movie started out being very anti-capitalist in its messaging, essentially saying: “I don’t dream of labor, and having a full time job isn't as important to me as doing the things that I want to do with my life, and following my passions." However, in the end, the moral that this movie comes to is that you don't need a "Purpose" in life, other than to just "live it," which is not only some hippy dippy bullshit, but it's not a theme so much as it is a lack of theme. 

I think the theme should have been more defined, and one way to do that is to take the whole "Fuck capitalism" route that they proposed at the beginning by having Joe argue with his mom about his full time job and run with it more. 

However, that's a big red flag for Pixar because Disney's clearly not going to dismantle the system that pays them billions every year. The theme has to be something else.

Then, instead of anti-capitalist propaganda, it seems like the theme could have been something along the lines of "Be happy with what you have" in terms of making a difference in children's lives and helping them to go along their path. This is briefly explored at the school in the beginning, and even referenced with the happy barber who ended up doing something completely different with his life than the thing he wanted to do. The theme in this scenario could have been something like "You never know what will truly make you happy until you're content with where you're at." (Similar to a Wreck it Ralph kind of theme, where you know who you are and accept your circumstances because that's just where you're at.)

Either way, the movie definitely didn't lean far enough into the whole "Fuck capitalism," thing that the Zoomers have going for them right now, and it also didn't lean the other way into the whole "Be happy with what you have" moral, either. Instead it came up with a clumsy third moral about "Sparks" and "Purposes" that fits literally nowhere into the story other than to serve as the plot device that gets 22 to come to Earth.

If they really wanted to make the "Spark" and "Purpose" theme work, though, they should have hit the whole “teacher” thing, harder. They should have reinforced Joe’s relationship with his students. He should have reflected at least once that he liked working with his kids and he enjoyed nurturing their musical talent. This never happens, and so the whole plot of the movie feels like a waste with an empty theme.

For example, there is a wasted scene with a music student in the middle of the movie where this opportunity is given to 22 in Joe's body, but I believe that Joe should have helped this child believe in herself and her musical abilities in order to reinforce his "Purpose" even though his "Spark" was music.

Overall, I just think that this theme of "Purpose" and "Spark" is lofty as hell, and difficult for children (if not most people) to grasp. Thinking about what brings you joy versus what you should be doing with your life is the kind of thing that you ponder at 3am when you're having a mental crisis, and usually those thoughts are about as scatterbrained as they appeared in this movie. 

I just think there was a lot of missed opportunity to pin down exactly what the broader idea of this movie was, and it could have been executed so much better if this movie had just been rewritten maybe two more times.

Category 6: Kid-Friendliness- D

I was not and am not convinced that this movie was made for kids. In fact, the whole time I was watching it, I couldn’t help but think that perhaps I was the target demographic for this movie, as I fall into the bracket of sad millennials who don't know what to do with their life (although I am on the cusp of Gen Z, for the record). 

However, I didn't cry at the end of this movie, which I think is a bad sign. I'm a big sucker for Disney films with a lot of heart, and I'm especially a sucker for animated movies where characters die before they can do the thing they want to do (a la Mufasa in The Lion King, and Tadashi in Big Hero 6), but this time I felt mostly tired after watching Soul. 

I think this is because the whole concept of the film felt way too deep for me, and I couldn't get past why this animated movie was tackling death in such a literal way. The Great Beyond is no longer a metaphorical, theoretical idea- it's a real thing, a real place. Literally. You can go to it and see what happened to all those that have come before you.

Joe looking up into "The Great Beyond."

Something about that just sat with me the wrong way. And while I know this movie made a painstaking effort to avoid religious discussion and to be as lighthearted about death as possible, it somehow still made the entire concept seem... dark?

I'm definitely not saying that this movie had to have religious overtones in order to be a better film (and I'm definitely not promoting one religious belief over another), especially not since this is technically a film for general audiences, (and parents would riot if their children were exposed to unsanctioned religious commentary) but... something about animating death in a way that depicts it this bluntly and absolutely is really bleak and unsettling for me.

Take Coco for example: In Coco, the main character, Miguel, is sent into the Land of the Dead in order to find his long lost relative so they can convince his family to allow him to play music. Even though most of the cast in this movie is long dead, the entire setting of the Land of the Dead is colorful and lively, implicating the notion of life after death. And while I understand that this is a cultural belief and there are clearly plot and thematic differences between Coco and Soul, somehow Coco still feels like it was made with children in mind. 

Nothing about Soul screamed: "Hey take your kids to see this!" 

The music was old (jazz), the main character was in his mid-forties, and the entire concept was about death and discovering what you're going to do with your life. As people in the biz would say, there is no "child-entry point" (Yes, I am referencing the whole Infinity Train controversy).

Soul had no singing and dancing, no princesses, and no superheroes. If I were a child, I would've been bored throughout most of this movie. And while I'm definitely not arguing that animation can only be made for children or with children in mind, I can't help but think that this is part of the reason why I didn't like Soul. 

The fact of the matter is, I was bored watching this movie.

And when I wasn't bored, I was unimpressed with what the movie had to say.

I was... annoyed, I think, with this movie as a whole. I guess I knew deep down I wasn't going to like it, but I went into it with an open mind, hoping I would be proved wrong. 

After watching it, though, I'm not sure how to feel other than disappointed in the choices that were made for this movie as a whole. Some of them worked for me, like the inclusion of more black culture and the theme of being happy with the life that you have instead of chasing a dream, but the execution was poor, leaving me feeling indifferent to most of this movie and everything it had to offer.

 

Overall, I'd give Soul a D. If you wanna watch a Disney movie where the black protagonist turns into an animal in order to learn the lesson they're meant to learn- watch The Princess and the Frog instead. It's a better movie.