SOUL, the new Pixar animated feature, features Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx), a frustrated Middle School band teacher, who finally gets his Big Break to play with an established Jazz musician. But one mis-step sends Joe from New York City to the steps of the Great Beyond.
Joe is given a chance to alter his fate when a precocious soul named 22 (voiced by Tina Fey) is placed in his care. Joe needs to show 22 that Life is worth living, that Life on Earth is worth the risk, and that Human Experience is fulfilling.
SOUL is directed by Academy Award winner Pete Docter (“Inside Out,” “Up”), co-directed by Kemp Powers (“One Night in Miami”). Jon Batiste’s original jazz compositions power the music in this film while musicians Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross also composed the film’s score.
If you’re looking for some musical diversion, SOUL will take you there. Are you a fan of Jazz? GRADE: B
Only as a cure for insomnia. Actually I do like a few jazz musicians-Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington. What I don’t like are those small combos – the ones with piano, upright bass, drummer who mostly uses his brushes or smooth jazz. Smooth (which is to real jazz what the Little River Band are to rock and roll.).
Steve, I played trumpet when I was in Junior High School so of course I was a fan of Miles Davis. I didn’t know anything about his background, but marveled at his talent.
I like jazz—especially Miles Davis (“Kind of Blue” is one of my favorites)—but I’m not sure this movie is for me.
Deb, I’ve seen all the Pixar movies and this one is the strangest. Religious people might have some problems with the souls and The Great Beyond.
I don’t have Disney+ and have no desire to get it.
Michael, DISNEY+ is worth it just for the MARVEL movies.
What Michael said goes for me too. Enough streaming services as it is. As for jazz, I do like some, but I am not as familiar with it as with other genres I really like, like blues and soul. My father used to go to the clubs on 52nd Street and saw a lot of the greats of an earlier era.
Jeff, there were some Jazz night clubs in Buffalo, but I had no way to get to them. By the time I learned how to drive, many of them had gone through bankruptcy and/or changed into rock or country-western music clubs.
Great Miles Davis doc of a year or two ago. I like jazz if I can pick out a melody. If it’s too abstract, I get lost.
Patti, I’m with you on abstract Jazz. If it sounds like musicians tuning their instruments, I tune out.
Of course I’m a jazz lover. I have many hundreds of CDs and listen to them frequently, or did before I got laid up. I have a Paul Desmond CD in the player right now. Dexter Gordon is a favorite (the cat’s named for him), as is Davis and many, many others. This movie, however is another thing. The “plus” channels are just profit engines for for companies that should be offering the material for the fee of general cable cost, same with Hulu, Acorn, etc. Thus I consider them a rip-off. Streaming? Bah. Sometimes it’s not even available except on the tablet or phone, and who wants to try to watch something on those little screens? Not me!
Rick, I’m with you on the proliferation of streaming services. We have Spectrum, HULU, Netflix, HBO, HBO Max, DISNEY+, AMAZON Prime TV, and a few others. You would think that would be enough, but sometimes there’s something on Apple TV we wish we could see. What happened to the one-stop Cable TV model?
Nice you can swing all those. We pay Comcast about $200/mo just to get regular stuff and ESPN and TCM.
Rick, we pay about $150 for Spectrum cable (about 300 channels) per month. The costs of Netflix, HULU, Disney+, and HBO/HBO Max are another $50. Well worth it during the pandemic. When things get back to semi-Normal, we may drop some of these services.
Sounds not really interesting to me …
But I have a funny (at least I hope so …) story re Miles Davis:
My wife liked Jazz already as a young woman – but of course it was quite difficult to get records in “communist” Hun gary, so she had just a few.
When we met early in 2007 I thought about a present for her and I found something, packaged it nicely and gave it to her. She looked at this, remarked that it was as heavy as a stone and then opened it:
The collected works of Miles Davis on 50 CDs!
She was so happy.
A bit OT (I might have written about this already):
When she was still in her early 20s the US government financed a series of concerts in the East Europe capitals – Louis Armstrong!
She took all her savings and went to Budapest to enjoy this one in a lifetime chance.
So when we went to New York City on our second US holiday we of course had to visit the Louis Armstrong House which has been made into a very nice little museum in the Bronx.
PS and totally OT:
We read about and saw pictures of the gigantic heaps of snow in New York etc – hope everyone is doing ok!
Here near the Danube we have had temperatures around the freezing point, strong winds – but less than a centimeter of snow. No real winter …
Wolf, what a wonderful present! I’m sure your wife loved those 50 CDs of Miles Davis! Usually Western NY gets hit by blizzards and snow storms around this time of year. It’s ironic it’s hitting New York City instead!