SOUL | FILM REVIEW
Dir: Pete Docter/Kemp Powers (PG, 103 mins)
The latest from Pixar, and Inside Out director Pete Docter, is a charming story of appreciating what you have that feels like a salve for, indeed, the soul after the year we’ve all had. Jamie Foxx voices jazz musician Joe Gardner, who’s long dreamed of being part of a jazz band but settled for being a teacher – yet when he finally gets his big break, he promptly falls down a manhole. He is on his way to the Great Beyond but, determined to play with legendary singer/bandleader Dorothea Williams, he struggles to find his way back to Earth.
This leads Joe to the Great Before, where new souls are primed to enter bodies on Earth, and he finds himself a custodian of soul 22: an impish Tina Fey, who has never found her spark, her reason for existing. After some help from a hippie in a sailing ship voiced by Graham Norton, she helps Joe back to our planet – except she ends up in his body, whilst he inhabits a cat. Can Joe reinhabit his body for the big show that night, and will soul 22 find her reason to be?
It’s all handled in heartwarming, inventive style from director Doctor, with the jazzy African-American characters illustrating some authentic diversity thanks to co-director/writer and One Night In Miami scribe Kemp Powers. Packed with visual wondrousness that creates whole new worlds with depth, detail and humour, Soul feels a more mature work, blazing with invention about roads travelled, opportunities missed and the true purpose of life. The voice cast are universally strong, amongst them Richard Ayoade and Hunt For The Wilderpeople’s Rachel Jones voicing Jerry and Terry, the gatekeepers of the Great Before and Beyond.
Heartwarming stuff, often very funny and moving with some brilliant visualisations of weighty concepts, all told in a more diverse voice.
Available on Disney Plus now
words KEIRON SELF