Soul: It has serious chops!

Soul (2020) • View trailer

Five stars. Rated PG, for mild thematic elements

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.31.20

This isn’t the first time I’ve observed that some of the sharpest, wittiest and most perceptive scripts belong to animated films.

 

An impressive percentage of them come from Pixar.

 

Joe Gardner's soul, right, tirelessly tries to find something that might inspire the cynical,
world-weary — and yet oddly childlike — Soul 22.

Pete Docter has been one of Hollywood’s most innovative writer/directors for well over a decade; he’s also one of the most savvy collaborators. Although he shared scripting credits on WALL•E, Up and Inside Out, all three possess an inventive point of view — a shrewd analysis of the human condition — that bespeaks Docter’s guiding influence.

 

This is even more obvious, given that he directed — and won well-deserved Academy Awards — for the latter two.

 

I figured Inside Out would remain his career masterpiece. I should’ve known better.

 

Soul — directed and co-written by Docter, with scripting assistance from Mike Jones and Kemp Powers — is another animated tour de force that ingeniously blends humor, pathos and social commentary with a wildly imaginative take on what makes us who we are.

 

Whereas Inside Out cheekily proposed how our workaday behavior varies according to the influence of (primarily) joy, sadness, fear and anger, Soul — available (ahem) solely via Disney+ — offers a fascinating theory for how our personalities are shaped, and the unalterable degree to which that influences who and what we become.

 

But the film doesn’t initially seem that way, and that’s another clever touch: An equally strong secondary story beats at its heart.

 

Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx), a gifted pianist with wicked jazz chops, has tirelessly gigged in an effort to get the one big break that might ignite a career. He’s a constant disappointment to his mother (Libba Gardner), who wishes he’d abandon such dreams and be content as a middle-school music teacher … particularly since he’s just been offered full-time employment.

 

Ah, but Joe lucks into an audition for world-renowned sax legend Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett) … and nails it. She makes him a member of her quartet, currently headlining at the Half Note (the absolute epitome, as visualized, of an intimate New York basement jazz club).

 

Giddy with delight, oblivious to his surroundings, Joe has an accident … and winds up — now a much smaller, ghostlike presence that represents his soul — on a moving sidewalk leading heavenward into The Great Beyond.

 

(This whiplash assault on our emotions and expectations — giddy with joy, sharing Joe’s success, to sudden whattheheck??? — is typical of Docter’s films.)