Movie Review: Soul
(Warning: Spoilers Ahead)
Pixar’s new movie, Soul, is a hit. It features a middle school band teacher named Joe who loves piano and who only learns the meaning of life by dying. After getting his dream piano gig, Joe unexpectedly dies and is sent to the afterlife. There, he refuses to let himself die and ends up in a before-life place where souls find their passions before they’re sent to Earth.
Joe teams up with a soul who has never been able to find a passion and doesn’t want to be sent to Earth. They decide they will find her passion and then give her pass to Earth to him so he can return and play his gig. These plans don’t go exactly the way they wanted them to and Joe and the young soul learn a new way to get him back to Earth. However,when they accidentally both fall to Earth, Joe takes over the soul of a cat while the baby soul takes his body.
Soul is a beautiful movie and has a great score. It’s incredibly fun to watch as it’s hard to take your eyes away from the incredible animation. However, Joe’s time on Earth as a cat goes on for a long time. The same jokes about a cat making human-like gestures and the soul in Joe’s body not knowing what to do are made over and over again.
By the end of the movie, the baby soul and Joe end up back in the afterlife and the baby soul has earned her pass. Joe convinces her she doesn’t actually have a passion, so he takes her pass and plays his gig. Then, he learns that piano isn’t actually his passion or what makes him impressive. He thinks back about all the things the baby soul thought were cool on Earth and that makes him realize that life is really just about living and about the little things. His realization causes him to go back to the afterlife to return the pass and give it to the baby soul. He decides that he has already lived and that that is enough.
It’s a sweet yet pretty boring movie about a somewhat unlikable character and a cat who cheat at life and death to learn that they should have just stuck to the rules. Furthermore, the ending completely changes what the movie meant in my head. Instead of dying, Joe is given another chance at life. Joe, a content soul ready to die because he’s learned that that is the right thing to do, lives.
