Soul

 

This was easily a top-tier Pixar production and their best film since 2015's Inside Out. A clear four-quadrant crowd pleaser, Soul - co-directed and co-written by Pete Doctor and Mike Jones - was absolutely entertaining throughout it 106 minutes run time. Its conceit and themes of Nature vs Nuture, Passion and Purpose, living vs Living were simple enough for the children to grasp but yet complex enough for adults to ruminate about. As with most Pixar stories, the conclusion is always inevitable, but the joy - especially in their best films - was the journey in getting there. In this case, the journey was gorgeously animated (as one would expect from Pixar) and well written. It was littered with witticisms and one-liners and supported by an amazing voice cast like  Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey (gosh, she can have an annoying middle-aged, white woman voice! lol), Angela Basset (what a voice!), Phylicia Rashed, Richard Ayoade, Alice Braga, Rachel House, Graham Norton (effortlessly bringing the laughs) and Questlove.  And on top of all that, it was also beautifully scored by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, with jazz arrangements and songs by Jon Baptiste. It was outstanding.

There was a clear Three-Acts structure to the story, and admittedly the second act felt a tad too dragged out and much more child-friendly than the first and last acts. However, Doctor and Jones managed to imbue a certain sense of childlike curiosity and discovery that helped to bring the older audience to hopefully re-connect with their youth. There was a certain amount of joie de vivre in seeing our two leads navigate through this Second Act. It also helped that Foxx and Fey had great chemistry together. Their often rapid-fire repartee helped to easily establish their characters and the central conflict, and made them easy to root for to succeed in whatever they aimed to do.  

Then of course, like most classic Pixar Third Acts, the emotional manipulation gets maximised, but only in this case it never really hit the full blast previously seen in Toy Story, Wall-E, Inside Out or even Coco. The tear ducts were opened and the amygdala was primed, but the waterworks never flowed. There might have been some moisture but no outright tissue-dabbing, nose-sniffling waterworks.

Thankfully, we still had the laughs. A few good genuine LOL-moments but lots of light-hearted sniggering and chuckles.

Reznor and Ross' score was beautiful (although nothing compared to what they did in Mank). But Baptiste's jazz was exciting and the song over the end-credits, It's All Right, a duet between Baptiste and Celeste definitely has a chance for a Best Song Oscar nomination. 

Soul was simply a feel-good film for the whole family. It invited you into its world and at the end brightened up your day just a little more than before you entered. And perhaps - hopefully - manages to highlight to you a thing or two about living. 

Stay to the end for a short - unrelated - end-credits easter egg.