Review of Soul (2020) by Movieturtle — 25 Dec 2020

Amazing visuals, snappy dialogue, interesting characters, lacking story, deplorable protagonist, and an ending that doesn't provide closure. I'd say I barely enjoyed watching it and will probably not see it another time. This movie honestly feels like it's trying to imitate Pixar's Inside Out, but does so with disingenuous material and does it poorly.

We follow our main guy Joe along his life being obsessed with music and finally getting the gig he wants only to fall into a sewer and die. From there we get to see the Great Beyond and the Great Before; terms that become problematic when talking about any actual afterlife that the movie makes neatly side step by saying that's all in the beyond.

Joe is able to avoid the Beyond (only to put a time limit on his actions and to trick him into thinking he's special) and escapes to the Before, where he proceeds to get back to his body even at the cost of stealing other's lives. Joe constantly shows he's selfish and doesn't care about others and only changes after he destroys a life and only through Deus Machina fixes it.

Combined with a lot of psych nonsense rhetoric, anti-christian hints, and naive view of life makes this movie feel like a way of tricking the next generation the way Disney did the previous: feelings are all that matter.