Disney Pixar’s ‘Soul’ Review: As Above, So Below
By: Lili Sheree
Tags: Disney Plus, Disney, Disney Pixar, Movie Review, Film Reviews

I remember seeing the promo for Disney Pixar’s Soul and being underwhelmed. The only memorable takeaway was that Jamie Foxx is a part of it but what I viewed in the trailer didn’t leave much to the imagination, or in my case, nothing to imagine, at all.

This morning, I saw an ad for the movie in my Twitter feed, mentioning it had debuted on Christmas morning (yesterday), and read the tweets below it. A lot were mixed reviews- some were in an uproar over Tina Fey being the voice of the main Black character, for a portion of the film. At first, I figured what I felt about not having much of an initial pull to watch it was being confirmed by the tweets I read. But if there was ever a time to not listen to the peanut gallery, today was that day, for me.

First, I must say that those who are upset about what I mentioned above simply needed something to be upset about. It doesn’t hold weight, nor does it downgrade the message of the film or the Black character’s portrayal. It simply made sense for how the story was written. Whew, chile…y’all are miserable.

Spoiler alert: The movie’s main character, Joe Gardner is a middle-school band teacher with ambitions of playing piano for a notable jazz band. He gets pushback from his mother (Phylicia Rashad), who is discouraging due to his father chasing his jazz dreams while leaving her to foot the majority of bills at home, and she sees the same pattern in Joe. When he finally lands a gig of his dreams with a popular saxophonist (Angela Bassett), Joe’s excitement distracts him from watching his steps and leads to his untimely death. Instead of traveling the people-mover with the rest of the recently deceased into the “Great Beyond”, Joe escapes to “personality school”, and becomes a mentor for a young soul who has yet to incarnate, who goes by the number 22.

The young soul, 22 (Tina Fey), is actually an old one who has been there for centuries (clearly…22 out of how many billion?) and refuses to believe she has a reason or “spark” to earn her “earth badge” and incarnate into a body. And I’m calling her “she”, simply because the voice of a woman was 22’s choice, so pipe-down gender non-conformists- this isn’t a slight. 22 is scared, has major doubts about living (I don’t blame sis), and is quite comfortable living her non-existent life in the “before” life.

The plot of the movie is based around Joe doing everything he can to cheat The Universe and get back to his body, but when that plan backfires he ends up understanding what it really means to live through 22’s perspective (or lack thereof).

Soul does a wonderful job of displaying how to embrace not living for a passion but to make living, in general, a passion worth savoring. There are messages involving astral projection, “lost souls”, living in the moment, and going after your dreams, in spite of naysayers. It even touches on finally grasping “the thing” (you know, that thing we feel will make us complete and then we can die) and how that can be a trivial pursuit if we lose sight of the journey.

There was a depiction of the yin/yang of being “in the zone”, when demonstrating a passion versus said passion turning into an obsession occupying the same dimension, that made me sit up in my bed in wonder. Somebody was high on shrooms or had a really high-dose of edibles when they envisioned this movie and you can’t tell me otherwise. I have the same convictions with Sausage Party, another movie that I feel went over the masses' heads, just as this one might. However, I believe Soul made everything vividly plain and the visuals were outstanding!

There’s no mistaking the poignancy of spirituality- given the number 22 is a master number that coincides with the character’s personality to a tee. To imagine that the lessons we learn on earth are inspiring to those assigned to inspire us in the cosmos gives another meaning to the saying “as above, so below.”

If you get a chance, watch Soul and share your thoughts.