A visually inventive, emotionally generous Pixar film that blends jazz, metaphysics, and midlife reflection into something both accessible and unusually thoughtful. It’s especially rewarding if you like animated films with real philosophical weight and a strong sense of mood and music.
Soul
Where to watch: Buy
Movie · Animation · Family
Fri · 1h 41m
Director: Pete Docter
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Graham Norton
Overview
Joe Gardner is a middle school teacher with a love for jazz music. After a successful audition at the Half Note Club, he suddenly gets into an accident that separates his soul from his body and is transported to the You Seminar, a center in which souls develop and gain passions before being transported to a newborn child. Joe must enlist help from the other souls-in-training, like 22, a soul who has spent eons in the You Seminar, in order to get back to Earth.
Director
Pete Docter
Cast
Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Graham Norton
Curator Review
Verdict
A visually inventive, emotionally generous Pixar film that blends jazz, metaphysics, and midlife reflection into something both accessible and unusually thoughtful. It’s especially rewarding if you like animated films with real philosophical weight and a strong sense of mood and music.
Best for
viewers who like animated films with emotional depth
fans of jazz and music-driven storytelling
people drawn to existential or life-purpose themes
families comfortable with a more reflective Pixar movie
audiences who appreciate striking visual imagination
Skip if
you want a straightforward kids’ adventure with constant action
you dislike sentimental or life-lesson storytelling
you prefer realism over fantasy and metaphysics
you’re not in the mood for a film about purpose, mortality, and self-discovery
Overview
Soul is one of Pixar’s most ambitious swings: a movie about talent, identity, and what makes a life feel worth living. It starts as a sharp, funny New York character piece and expands into something stranger and more contemplative, using jazz as both setting and philosophy. The animation is elegant and often dazzling, especially when the film moves between the grounded city world and the abstract afterlife spaces.
Worth noting
What makes it work is its emotional clarity. Joe’s frustration feels recognizable, and the film’s central idea lands because it resists easy answers about destiny and fulfillment. It’s thoughtful without becoming cold, and it finds warmth in small details, performance, and rhythm rather than big speeches.
Bottom line
The film isn’t perfect: some of its concepts can feel a little over-explained, and the structure becomes more idea-driven than story-driven in the back half. But even when it stumbles, it remains unusually sincere and visually alive. It’s Pixar at its most reflective, and for many viewers, that makes it one of the studio’s most memorable films.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Jay (4.5★) · 10101 likes
i dont know about you! but im feeling 22!
Karsten (4.5★) · 9937 likes
Soul is the textbook definition of a one-of-a-kind in that there’s nothing textbook about it. From the look to the music and from the structure to the story itself, everything about this is completely fresh. Like watching a Pixar film for the first time again. The film starts with high concepts and the “adventure” ends with 30 minutes left. Joe Gardner is both gifted and soo normal. Basically, Pixar started with a concept as broad as purpose and stretched it… more
•lily• (4.5★) · 8016 likes
Yeah therapy’s good but you ever cried your fucking eyes out while watching a Pixar film
Patrick Willems (3.5★) · 5505 likes
Brb gotta go question all my life choices
Sam (4★) · 5208 likes
A great way to get kids started on their existential crisis from an early age
Themes
purpose and meaning, midlife crisis, self-discovery, jazz and improvisation, life and mortality, identity, spirituality, mentorship