On a technical and visual level, Soul is an amazing achievement. The amount of detail they used to make the scenes, and the artistic choices are spot on gorgeous.
But, the dislikable characters and muddled storytelling at the most crucial parts left me detached and cold to the movie as a whole.
Spoiler time: In the Great Before, where all unborn souls come from, each soul is required to find their own "Spark" before they can be born. A Spark is simply the desire to live and be alive. This Spark can be ignited by anything, from food, to music, to witnessing someone else's life. However, this is not the soul's "purpose", nor does it set their course in life. Rather, what inspires it does not matter, simply the will to live and experience more means a soul is ready. If you think this is a smidge confusing and complicated, it is, and it really isn't stated clearly in the film.
Enter Joe, our deeply dislikable and depressing main character. Joe has lived a pathetic life and is now dead. Jazz-obsessed to the point of putting off his family and colleagues, at 50 ish something years old, Joe is an unhappy, part time band teacher, who still relies on his mother (whom he lies to) to pay his bills while chasing after bit gigs to make his 'big break'. Imagine "Mr. Holland" at his most annoying, and you'll have Joe.
Any good he's done has been inadvertently accomplished, as he resents time away from his jazz fame obsession, and any joys he's experienced accidentally stumbled upon. Not a single family or friend realizes he's died.
Anyways, our plot is born because dead Joe misunderstands what a Spark is from the start, because he doesn't want to face that his life has been somewhat pointless. Like basically all of us viewers, he misinterprets these "Sparks" as a person's reason for existence, assigned before birth, rather than simply the spark of life. His MUST be jazz.
Joe desperately wishes to believe that the reason and purpose for his birth is to play jazz. It would make the rest of his meh, mostly empty life have meaning if his purpose was "jazz" and he spent his minutes in pursuit of it. He uses this to justify avoiding accepting death, and stealing an unborn soul's one chance at living (our other main character, "22," who's quirkiness falls closer to irritating than charming half the time), all in order to go to one more crappy gig.
Joe reminds me of those fat girls who desperately cling to the fantasy that, if only they lost weight, the rest of the their life and personality would magically transform, only to discover they're still the unhappy, meh them, but in a smaller body, and they Can't. Handle. It.
The film's major weakness is that it needs to get Joe from realizing he does NOT have a purpose in life and reason for being born (the purpose of life was simply to live, which he didn't do much of, and that even ordinary lives are worthwhile if they are lived fully), accepting it and being ok with how his life went, and moving on into death, and the film can't do it. It doesn't have the time or tools. SO, it uses plot magic to jump Joe from the start of sort of, kind of, half-realizing music wasn't the point of being alive, to the end they want and we're left wondering how that happened.
"22" is the more interesting character: an unborn soul who's been around since literally the dawn of human kind and still hasn't found the Spark to live. The best parts of the film are watching 22 find things worth living for (while Joe neurotically tries to rush 22 along and ignore it all). However, the bloat from Joe means 22's quest is secondary, and somewhat shoved in, and they do not adequately manage to convey what an ancient, but still young, soul with thousands of years of observation, but who still doesn't want to live, might be like. They settled on "irritating preteen know it all" and it doesn't quite hit the right note.
"Soul" is unable to balance and interweave these two opposite storylines, 22's journey to finding the Spark and desire to be born into life, and Joe's acceptance of his death, so we're left with a brackish mess, lumps of different colored play doh's hastily smooshed into shape for the ending, which (tries to) pander to the audience.
All of these may seem like complicated, deeply philosophical themes for a movie, and they are. Soul does a poor job of simplifying these complex concepts clearly. It also lifts beloved bits from Inside Out, pasting near direct copies into the film.
This film is directed at adults, and will bore small children to whining. Many adults will likewise be bored, find it difficult to follow, or dislike the characters.
It has many cute and charming *individual* moments to enjoy, but ultimately, it is not the next "Inside Out" and I imagine it will quickly fade to the back of the Pixar library.
But, the dislikable characters and muddled storytelling at the most crucial parts left me detached and cold to the movie as a whole.
Spoiler time: In the Great Before, where all unborn souls come from, each soul is required to find their own "Spark" before they can be born. A Spark is simply the desire to live and be alive. This Spark can be ignited by anything, from food, to music, to witnessing someone else's life. However, this is not the soul's "purpose", nor does it set their course in life. Rather, what inspires it does not matter, simply the will to live and experience more means a soul is ready. If you think this is a smidge confusing and complicated, it is, and it really isn't stated clearly in the film.
Enter Joe, our deeply dislikable and depressing main character. Joe has lived a pathetic life and is now dead. Jazz-obsessed to the point of putting off his family and colleagues, at 50 ish something years old, Joe is an unhappy, part time band teacher, who still relies on his mother (whom he lies to) to pay his bills while chasing after bit gigs to make his 'big break'. Imagine "Mr. Holland" at his most annoying, and you'll have Joe.
Any good he's done has been inadvertently accomplished, as he resents time away from his jazz fame obsession, and any joys he's experienced accidentally stumbled upon. Not a single family or friend realizes he's died.
Anyways, our plot is born because dead Joe misunderstands what a Spark is from the start, because he doesn't want to face that his life has been somewhat pointless. Like basically all of us viewers, he misinterprets these "Sparks" as a person's reason for existence, assigned before birth, rather than simply the spark of life. His MUST be jazz.
Joe desperately wishes to believe that the reason and purpose for his birth is to play jazz. It would make the rest of his meh, mostly empty life have meaning if his purpose was "jazz" and he spent his minutes in pursuit of it. He uses this to justify avoiding accepting death, and stealing an unborn soul's one chance at living (our other main character, "22," who's quirkiness falls closer to irritating than charming half the time), all in order to go to one more crappy gig.
Joe reminds me of those fat girls who desperately cling to the fantasy that, if only they lost weight, the rest of the their life and personality would magically transform, only to discover they're still the unhappy, meh them, but in a smaller body, and they Can't. Handle. It.
The film's major weakness is that it needs to get Joe from realizing he does NOT have a purpose in life and reason for being born (the purpose of life was simply to live, which he didn't do much of, and that even ordinary lives are worthwhile if they are lived fully), accepting it and being ok with how his life went, and moving on into death, and the film can't do it. It doesn't have the time or tools. SO, it uses plot magic to jump Joe from the start of sort of, kind of, half-realizing music wasn't the point of being alive, to the end they want and we're left wondering how that happened.
"22" is the more interesting character: an unborn soul who's been around since literally the dawn of human kind and still hasn't found the Spark to live. The best parts of the film are watching 22 find things worth living for (while Joe neurotically tries to rush 22 along and ignore it all). However, the bloat from Joe means 22's quest is secondary, and somewhat shoved in, and they do not adequately manage to convey what an ancient, but still young, soul with thousands of years of observation, but who still doesn't want to live, might be like. They settled on "irritating preteen know it all" and it doesn't quite hit the right note.
"Soul" is unable to balance and interweave these two opposite storylines, 22's journey to finding the Spark and desire to be born into life, and Joe's acceptance of his death, so we're left with a brackish mess, lumps of different colored play doh's hastily smooshed into shape for the ending, which (tries to) pander to the audience.
All of these may seem like complicated, deeply philosophical themes for a movie, and they are. Soul does a poor job of simplifying these complex concepts clearly. It also lifts beloved bits from Inside Out, pasting near direct copies into the film.
This film is directed at adults, and will bore small children to whining. Many adults will likewise be bored, find it difficult to follow, or dislike the characters.
It has many cute and charming *individual* moments to enjoy, but ultimately, it is not the next "Inside Out" and I imagine it will quickly fade to the back of the Pixar library.