Soul (PG)

Joe Gardner is a middle school music teacher in New York City, who fervently believes that "music is life". He shares this passion with his mother and auditions to play piano at a popular jazz club as part of a quartet led by Dorothea Williams. On his way home from impressing Dorothea, Joe tumbles down an open manhole and his soul becomes separated from his body. Joe refuses to travel into the light of The Great Beyond and finds himself instead in The Great Before.

LondonNet Film Review

Soul (PG) Film Review from LondonNet

Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx) is a part-time middle school teacher in New York City, who fervently believes that “music is life”. He inherited a passion for jazz from his late father and hankers for creative enrichment as a session musician. A former student called Curly (Questlove) secures Joe an audition to play piano in a quartet led by saxophonist Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett)…

On his way home from impressing Dorothea, Joe absent-mindedly tumbles down an open manhole and his soul separates from his body. Joe’s essence refuses to travel into the light of The Great Beyond – “I have a gig tonight. I can’t die now!” – and tumbles instead into The Great Before, where fledgling souls develop personalities. The gate-crasher agrees to mentor Soul 22 (Tina Fey) to chart a path back to his hospitalised body.

Soul is a wildly imaginative and deeply moving meditation on humanity from the computer animation wizards at Pixar, which tackles abstract concepts – mortality, depression, alienation – with a playful sense of humour. In Inside Out, director Pete Docter cleverly visualised the tug of war between the five core emotions of an 11-year-old girl. Here, he applies a similarly deft touch with co-director Kemp Powers to a coming of middle age story that inhabits a space between the physical and spiritual. Soul riffs confidently to its own beat, employing bold visual flourishes to render Joe’s odyssey in strokes that can be appreciated on multiple levels. The exquisitely beautiful picture reminds us to cherish everyday pleasures and let the joyful act of living be a soothing balm to our troubled souls.

– Jo Planter