Soul

Soul

Directors - Pete Doctor & Kemp Powers

Story – Pete Doctor, Mike Jones, Kemp Powers

2022, USA

Stars – Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Graham Norton

 

Life is worth living and all that jazz.

 

Of course, you might have to die first to reflect on your lost chances, et cetera. This is Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx), a loser jazz musician who dies in an accident just as he gets his big chance. Or maybe you are a potential soul called 22 (Tina Fey) and are scared to live, and you hide this behind a smartass attitude and an annoying white middle-aged woman’s voice? As Joe is our way in, and this is about a life lived in lost chances, disapproval and regret, there’s quite a mature feel going in. Pixar demonstrates a deceptively gentle mastery of the family-friendly animation as there’s a lightness of touch accessible to all. The animation is excellent – look at that hair and fur! – and there are a lot of fun little gags in the background and in passing (the impressionable pre-life souls for example). It’s rich, amusing, addressing big themes, etc.

 

Then 22 body-swaps with Joe and he’s in the cat. Probably not enough cat-specific gags, but that’s not what causes a dip in investment. The issue is this: it was originally meant to be 22’s story but it became Joe’s and then got shared. But when 22 goes on a kind of teaching Joe how to live when in his body, it seems a betrayal of Joe’s agency and seems unwarranted. He doesn’t feel like the incompetent loser his mother says; he’s just following his muse and that’s a rewarding life in itself. Are we really to think that Joe wouldn’t convince his pupil to continue playing her instrument, that only 22’s possession and childishness achieved this? And what about how the people in the barber are all enraptured at 22-as-Joe’s childish profundities? There is the sense that Joe is being dumped on needlessly and incorrectly.

 

Something just doesn’t fit quite right – the result of the original 22-dominated script and trying to make that still work even though Joe stepped forward. And that’s before we get to the issue that, however androgynous the soul fleetingly claims to be, 22 has a sassy white middle-aged woman’s voice that defines the entity, and that’s what we sense when “she” appropriates Joe’s black character and life and teaches him life-lessons. It’s always Tina Fey’s voice and it never varies, although it could and probably should. Hey, her naiveté even wins over his mother. All the fine work establishing Joe’s relatable life-challenges and building him into someone to like, a maturity and flaws to root for, and it all plays second-fiddle to one of those animated sassy-troll conceits that dominate contemporary franchises. As I watched, I had the sneaky suspicion that Joe’s character was being betrayed and it was Robert Daniels’ writing that shone a light for me on why that might be. 

But, the jazzy feel is so accomplished that not even the otherworldliness overturns it: it’s likely the street scenes and the barbers that will stay with you. There’s an underlay of melancholy that sympathises with adult viewers’ life disappointments while at the same time offering its young audience the advice to seize your chances and yet appreciate what you have. It may stumble, but in its approach to this from both ends of life-experience shows the narrative ambition Pixar is often heralded for. ‘Soul’ is beautifully made, its exploration of The Meaning Of Life is standard, and one can only applaud its emphasis on art enriching a life and soul

 

Jazz and all that life, etc.