In short: I cried. Pixar doesn’t miss. 

Soul tells the story of Joe Gardner, a middle school music teacher, who dies — that’s the inciting incident, not a spoiler. Joe had finally gotten the chance to play in a jazz quartet, the type of music he loves the most, but as he calls someone to gush about it, he steps into a pothole and kicks the bucket. From here, Joe appears on an escalator of sorts that leads to the Great Beyond, where souls go to permanently die; Joe doesn’t want to be dead, so he finds a way around this before he can pass on forever. He finds himself in the Great Before, an ethereal plane where souls are made and delivered to Earth. Here, he meets a troublesome soul who doesn’t want to leave and live as a human. If you see the stark character folds here, you can guess how this movie will go — cue the fun, Pixar-esque character development-filled journeys.  

This film will challenge you to both question and appreciate life — can’t we all relate to that after the year we’ve had? 

The animation was beautiful; it’s impressive to see how far Pixar has come since Toy Story with computer animation in this film.

There was witty, well-timed humor, relatable characters, and the way the creators addressed intricate topics like identity, birth, and death in simple terms for children was interesting. It takes a creative mind to come up with this and organize it in a way that all ages can understand and respect. 

You don’t see a movie like this every day. I think with Hollywood, there are often many “filler” movies that take up space between better, more memorable movies. The last one of these movies that really moved me was Coco, from 2017. I look at movies around then to now — Boss Baby, The Good Dinosaur, Secret Society of Second Born Royals (*gags*) — and I get sad that people had to waste their time watching these films, let alone creating them in the first place. Every now and then, however, my faith is restored when fantastic movies are released; I guess that these bad movies need to exist in order for us to be able to put other, better movies on a pedestal. 

Even though I cried at its conclusion, the ending itself fell flat for me. However, it’s a Pixar film, directed toward children, so I understand why Joe didn’t do what I thought he was going to do — watch the movie, and you’ll get what I mean.  

I’ll rank Soul a 9/10, only because the ending didn’t hit for me. Nonetheless, it’s a refreshing movie for the – wait for it – soul (da dum tsss) that helps restore my faith in Hollywood.