Soul - Movie Review

Critics Score - 8 of 10

General Audience Score - 9 of 10

Soul, the latest Pixar movie from Pete Doctor, the mind that brought us some of Pixar's best work, from Inside Out and Up to Monsters Inc. He is a creative mastermind and filmmaker that can reach right into your chest and play your heart strings like a fiddle. But how well does he do that with his latest movie, Soul?

PROS - Soul is a perfectly beautiful film that looks and feels very fresh yet similar to Inside Out. Of course we're accustomed to such extremely high quality animated work from Pixar and while Soul is neither a letdown visually, I see no need to write home about it. It meets the Pixar standard of excellence. And the music, both songs and original score are very well done, with the movie being about **spoilers** death and music, it exceeds many other animated films in the sound department. The voices and characters are very good and well constructed, the screenwriting and dialogue is sharp and to quote a character, "very witty". This movie will make you laugh and is one of the most enjoyable animated films since Spiderman Into the Spiderverse.

Kids and adults alike will find much amusement in watching Soul, it's a great time for everyone. But in the end it manages to fall short of the truly top echelon Disney/Pixar movies. It starts off on such a solid foundation, after the first act I was ready to put the film at a 10. The originality and one liners had me cracking up every few minutes, but ultimately the film loses it's way. The crafts that went into this film are second to none, you can see the insane amount of effort in virtually every frame of the movie. Although the ending is good, it doesn't knock the last pitch out of the park, like say, it's Pixar counterpart, Inside Out.

CONS - The things to dislike about Soul are few and far between. But when you hold it up against the other top tier Pixar/Pete Doctor movies, you see something is a little off with Soul. Might be a little difficult to explain, bear with me. Inside Out is one of the finest movies of the last decade, with so much of the movie being about abstract ideas and the inner workings of the human mind. Pete make a positively rich and fascinating story and world around these ideas. The same can be said with Soul, through the first act he is working on the same level, similar concepts and abstract ideas about life and immortality with the fascinating Pete Doctor spin on them. But then the movie turns it's attention back down to earth, the high minded ideas as well as the brilliance and witty humor sustaining these high levels of engrossing story run low. It's great, really great, just not perfect.

SUMMARY - Go watch Soul. You'll love it. It's still extremely enjoyable but it just isn't that same cinema experience as a perfect 10 out of 10 animated film. If it had stayed the course the first act was on, it very well may have landed in the top 2 or 3 best Pixar films, maybe animated films of all time. But it wasn't meant to me. It just didn't have quite enough Soul.