Soul
Year: 2020
Rating: PG
Length: 100 minutes / 1.67 hours
I’ll give Pixar credit: they know how to make trailers that give away almost nothing about what the plot is. Sure, I could roughly gauge what Soul (2020) was about, but I could never have guessed it would be this deep. Of course, when dealing with concepts as heady as the afterlife, Pixar had to really balance the line between adhering to any particular religious belief. Be prepared to tear up at least a few times because Soul can hit hard when it comes to life itself.
As is the case with any Pixar film, I usually watch for CGI modeling/technology advancements. In Soul, they took the time to perfect the look of some of the most difficult hair to animate, and it shows. This isn’t to say that we’re getting closer to jumping the uncanny valley (of which they can probably do by now) because this would also ignore the mind-bending “architects” who seem equally 2-D and 3-D at the same time. It was also fascinating to see an actual real-world city brought to life through CGI since it almost felt like the real thing.
Admittedly, I didn’t have this movie high on my “to watch” list. Tina Fey’s character seemed annoying, and Disney’s choice to push it to Disney+ instead of going to theaters (even simultaneously) felt like a move to quell a film they didn’t think was that great. I was glad that I took the time to watch it, though. I appreciated the little plot details that connected everything and made logical sense. I also thought the core plot revolving around raison d’etre was a bold move that made me really contemplate the whole idea of a “life’s purpose.”
Pixar’s most philosophically deep film to date, I give Soul 4.0 stars out of 5.
