Pixar’s ‘Soul’ combines mid-life crisis, jazz fantasia
Pete Docter’s “Soul” features stairwayto-heaven visions of the afterlife, a prebirth “before” realm where souls are glowing turquoise orbs and an in-between spiritual realm trafficked by some kind of psychedelic pirate. And yet, kind of magically, it’s about “just regular old living.”
Part of the fun, of late, with Pixar’s more ambitious movies is following a plate-spinning act that juggles animation whimsy, kids-movie imperatives and the meaning of life in some seemingly impossible combination that nevertheless in the end makes us cry. You can imagine a Pixar Mad Libs coming up with a movie about hamsters in space that’s really about graduating high school, or one with unicorn cousins who learn to cope with trauma.
But part of what’s refreshing about “Soul,” which debuted Friday on Disney+, is its uniqueness. It’s a deliberate and overdue new direction for Pixar. The animation giant’s 23rd film, “Soul” is its first to feature a Black protagonist. Kemp Powers, the screenwriter of the upcoming “One Night in Miami,” is also Pixar’s first African American co-director. The film is lushly set in a sun-dappled Manhattan. You will even hear, for a moment, A Tribe Called Quest playing in the background of a barbershop. For an animation world that has almost always been colored white, this borders on radical. It’s also joyous.
Joe ( Jamie Foxx) is a middle-school music teacher who has long pined for his own career as a jazz pianist. On the day his big shot finally comes — a chance to sit in with the revered saxophonist Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett) and her quartet — a stray step into an open man
hole robs him of his dream. With his body laying comatose in a hospital, Joe’s soul lands in a netherworld — and Pixar’s animating ingenuity goes into overdrive.
It’s the elusiveness of purpose that “Soul” swirls around, tenderly examining what gives life meaning. For some, it might come as easily as the notes that pour out of Dorothea’s sax. But even as “Soul” rhapsodizes the beauty of artistic creation, it ponders the value of life for souls of less premeditated determination. “Soul,” a celebration of those less certain of their path in life, is a kind of corollary to Pixar’s “Ratatouille,” a portrait of a very purposeful young artist.
“Soul,” a Walt Disney Co. release, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America for thematic elements and some language. Running time: 100 minutes.