In the wake of all of the sequels and tepid properties that Pixar has become known for as of late, it’s sometimes easy to forget just how groundbreaking and imaginative their films could be. For me, the one I always return to is Wall-E, with its astonishing, nearly silent first half of the film, but of course, there’s the opening montage of Up – another case where the studio defied easy expectations and did something richer, something weirder than you’d expect. It’s been a long time – probably since Inside Out, although Coco was not without its moments – since I walked away from a Pixar movie feeling truly moved, feeling like I saw something original and vibrant and rich and beautiful. But Soul gave me all of that and then some. It may not be perfect, but the peaks so outweigh the minor valleys that I don’t even care that much.
Like with Wall-E, so much of Soul‘s greatness comes from the first half of the film means that you’ll have to forgive me for focusing on it as much as I am. But that opening stretch of film – which revolves around the untimely death of Joe Gardner, a band teacher and jazz musician on the verge of achieving his dreams – finds Pixar plunging into stylish, original, gorgeous animation in a way that they haven’t since Wall-E ran his hand through the rings of a planet. Soul‘s afterlife is stunning, leaving me sad all anew that I couldn’t see it on the big screen, from its escalator straight out of A Matter of Life and Death to its wonderfully sketched out afterlife “counselors,” from the Spider-Verse-inspired breakdown of reality around the edges to the freedom to play with space and reality in a way that Pixar hasn’t let themselves in a long time. Yes, the story that begins here – as Joe finds himself responsible for a soul who’s refused to head on to her life on Earth, trying to convince her that life is worth living while also trying to get back to his abruptly ended existence – is a good one, setting up the payoffs to come. But for much of this section of Soul, I simply found myself lost in their world in a way I haven’t been for so long, reminding me what animation can accomplish.
And so, yes, when Soul shifts gears in its second half, bringing with it an old genre of family comedy that I was honestly a bit surprised to see show up, I was initially a little disappointed. Sure, Wall-E lost some of its wonder as humanity re-entered the film, but the movie still felt rich and satirical and engaging, while Soul suddenly started to feel…broad, and easy, and silly. Oh, I laughed at it, but it felt lesser than the film that had come before it, as though the movie had set up great ideas but then walked away from them, and I was a bit disappointed.
I shouldn’t have been, though, because Soul‘s closing act is a thing of beauty, pulling all of the disparate threads and pieces of the movie together to find something profound, grappling with ideas that speak probably more to the parents in the audience than the kids: the idea of whether our purpose is really our meaning in life, of whether the thing that brings us joy is the same thing that gives our life that meaning, of how often we miss out on the details of the world around us, of how our dreams aren’t always the thing we think they are as we chase them. Soul ends up tossing around big ideas like that – questions about the meaning of life and our purpose – but doing so in a way that never neglects its silly side, making you laugh and still find the beauty in its animation and its world as it does all of that. And its closing scenes are something truly wonderful, expressing through visuals and cinematic tools what no dialogue could easily do.
I might have wondered, halfway through, if Soul could live up to its first half. But somehow, it does, giving me not only a great movie, but one of Pixar’s best films, period. It’s a reminder of what the studio can do at its best – make entertainment that’s genuinely for a family, with humor to spare, all while giving you groundbreaking animation and complex emotional stories that defy the normal boundaries of “kids movies.” Soul asks questions about life, about purpose, about art, about living – and it also finds time for silliness and anarchy aplenty (even if, admittedly, the comedy can feel broad and silly – perhaps too much for the film around it). It’s a movie that feels researched and worked on (as a white dude who’s not knowledgable about jazz, it’s hard for me to speak to the authenticity of the Black experience of the film, or the music scene, but it feels researched and genuine in a way that most films don’t to me, giving me the feeling of care that it seems went into it), but more than that, it feels like a labor of love in the best of ways. What a treat.
It’s odd to write about how much I love The Good Place, Michael Schur’s uproariously funny, fiercely humane, intimidatingly intelligent while simultaneously charmingly dumb show about the afterlife, morality, the meaning of life, and the horrors of life in Florida. Here is a show I deeply love – a show that moved me, that helped me remember that it’s important to be a good person even as the world burned, that always made me laugh week in and week out…and yet, it’s a show that definitely made major missteps – missteps far more severe than most of the other “great” shows of the modern era. And the final season was no exception…and even so, I loved every minute of it.
Slowly but surely, The Good Place has become maybe my favorite show on television – high praise, considering that my annual airwaves also contain Better Call Saul. But The Good Place is so laugh out loud funny, in so many ways – silliness, surreal comedy, food puns, visual tricks, comic powerhouses – but also somehow manages to be a show about what it’s like to try to be a good person in a horrible world. It’s a show that can spend twenty minutes making fun of Jacksonville, but also grapple with moral philosophy, and the questions of determinism in the universe, and how motivations can shape whether or not we are good people, regardless of our actions. In other words, it’s not just the funniest show on television; it’s also one that makes you want to be a better person, and to attempt to do that even in face of the awfulness of the world.
It’s hard to write about Philip K. Dick in general – what new can be said about a writer who was so influential and who’s inspired so much writing? And that goes doubly for Ubik, one of Dick’s most acclaimed novels. And yet, here I am, trying to describe one of the best novels written by one of the most fascinating and interesting science-fiction writers who ever lived.
Not all five-star reviews are equal. It’s just a fact of life that you deal with as a reviewer – although grades and ratings are helpful, they’re not the be-all and end-all. No, the best you can do is choose a rating, and then hope to explain what the book/movie really deserves. And that’s doubly so in the case of George Saunders’ first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. Because I’ve given five-star rankings on this site, more than a few times, but I’d be hard pressed to think of a book I’ve read in recent years that moved me, floored me, stunned me, and simply blew me away like Lincoln in the Bardo. It’s not just the best book of the last several years; it may be one of the best books I’ve ever read, period, full stop.
Umney's Alley 