Soul isn't just a movie. It's an experience. One that I was initially reluctant to have because of the fact that Pete Docter is the film's director. If you're not familiar with Pete Docter, he directed Monsters, Inc., Up, and Inside Out and had a story or executive producer role on Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, WALL-E, Brave, Monsters University, Toy Story 4, and Onward. So he's a staple of Pixar. Docter tends to go in deeper and more complex directions with his movies and so there are times I feel like I'm missing a key element when watching his films. Especially the more esoteric films like Inside Out. But then I watched Soul last night and I was pleasantly surprised that that wasn't the case this time around.
Soul is a very straight forward film. It's far from simple, but it doesn't jerk the audience around with it's themes. Which is something that I appreciate about Pixar. They tend to be good at knowing who the audience for their movies are and never talk down to us. Instead they just try to tell the best story they can tell and leave it up to us whether we go along for the ride or not. Which is a very smart way of doing things. Other studios owned by Disney could stand to take note of what Pixar does right and follow their example.
I haven't always connected with characters in Pixar movies, but I connected to the character of 22 in this movie. 22 is a new soul, who hasn't lived life yet and is hesitant to begin her life due to the way the Soul Counselors prepared the new souls for life on Earth in the "Great Before". It's kind of a commentary on the one size fits all approach to education that we have here in North America, when everyone is different and has their own way of learning. It feels more like allegory rather than a direct reference to it, but it's still something that I picked up on.
Speaking of 22, a fellow blogger named Kyle mentioned on Twitter that the character is autistic. I was slightly skeptical of that take, just because I hadn't seen the movie yet and sometimes people can be mistaken when it comes to saying whether a fictional character is autistic or not. But after watching the movie last night, I 100% agree with Kyle's assessment of the character. Though moreso at the beginning of the movie than at the end.
The main character, Joe Gardner, is a pretty likeable character. I wasn't sure about him at first, just because I really didn't know where they were going with him. But he grew on me as the movie went on. And that's because he grows as a person as the movie goes on, which I appreciate greatly. At the start of the movie Joe is so focused on his dream of becoming a jazz musician that he had forgotten that your dreams don't define you and sometimes they have to change as you go through life. As the movie goes on he is reminded of this, and this is integral to his arc in the movie. Which is really cool.
It doesn't just remind Joe of this, it reminds the audience as well. When I was in high school I wanted nothing more than to be on the radio, with my own family. Never in a million years did I imagine that I'd be a blogger. But when my dream of being on the radio didn't pan out, I wasn't really sure of what I was going to do. It wasn't until 2015 that I finally settled on being a blogger. And even then, I wasn't sure if my blog would take off or how long I'd run it for. But here I am, writing about a movie that has given me the best viewing of a Pixar movie since Toy Story blew me away in theatres 25 years ago.
I've never been as big of a fan of Pixar as I am of Walt Disney Animation Studios. Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed pretty much every movie that Pixar has put out that I watched, but my family stopped renting the Pixar movies after WALL-E came out in 2008, and even then, we bought Cars and Ratatouille on DVD. Of course this was before streaming, so I didn't have access to the movies unless we bought them on DVD/Blu-ray, or caught them on TV. I saw Toy Story 3 and Brave on TV and only saw Inside Out in theatres because my girlfriend at the time wanted to see it with me. In other words I need to catch up on my Pixar movies. Soul was a great way to start on my Pixar movie viewings.
Overall Soul is an excellent movie. It was funny, smartly written, and visually stunning. The people and scenery look extremely realistic, but there's a cat in a good portion of the movie and the cat looks more cartoonish. It also looks more cartoonish in the "Great Before" scenes. If you haven't seen it yet, you owe it yourselves to check it out.
And that is my final post for 2020. I'm taking the rest of this week off but I wanted to get this review out because Soul dropped this weekend and I watched it last night. So I will see you all in 2021. I'll be back with more reviews and posts starting next week. So until then I will talk to you later.
Kyle's Blog
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