Film Review - Soul (2020)

 Soul is the new Pixar film that has gone from cinemas straight to Disney Plus due to 19 and is the first Pixar film with a black lead named Joe voiced by Jamie Foxx who is a teacher and wanna be Jazz musician who after falling down a hole in New York finds himself in the Great Beyond a land where Souls go to die but Joe feels it isn’t his time to go yet so he works to get himself back to the land of the living.

 

Soul is an interesting Pixar movie and its one also that I did enjoy watching but its also one that I have some issues with but before I delve into those I want to write about what I did like:

 

- Firstly the film has some gorgeous animation in it from the more realistic looking animation of Joe and his day to day life to this almost hand drawn look to the spirits that work in the Great Beyond and the Great Beyond itself feeling like both this black unending void with the white light of the divine at the centre of it and then the Great Before which is like this big wide open space with blues and purple skies, visually this movie is just delightful and if the previews were a guide it would’ve looked great on the big screen.

 

- Secondly the voice acting is really good, Mr Foxx is in a role that I have genuinely enjoyed him in for the first time in what feels like a long long time and he is really good in this movie, I also enjoyed Graham Norton as Moonwind the spiritual guru and sign twirler who helps Joe get back home and Angela Bassett in a small role as well.

 

But about those issues with the film:

 

- Well firstly a lot of the spiritual aspects of the storytelling felt very weird to me in that when I was sitting there watching the film I said to myself “This is weird” and not in the best of ways either and I find myself wondering how this would’ve played during a normal School Holidays release in cinemas and I can’t help but think that it would’ve played best for that 7-12 year old audience that sometimes is catered to in some School Holiday blocks.

 

- And secondly I really didn’t like Ms Tina Fey as Soul 22, her character annoyed me a fair amount and it feels like its more her story than Joe’s and that really bothers me I mean Pixar finally gets to do a story with a black lead voiced very well and for so much of the film he’s relegated to a side character while this other person takes centre stage and it feels like they are intruding.

 

Now to be fair it does lead to some touching moments and the film does pull on the emotional cords well but after a while I didn’t have that proper Pixar emotional feel like the end of Toy Story 3 or Monsters Inc where you really do feel for the characters on screen and the bond they share and when it was over I didn’t have tears in my eyes.

 

And so that was Soul and it’s a good solid Pixar affair that I did like and I did enjoy but its issues hold it back from being one of their best for me, 3 out of 5.

Film Review - Freaky (2020)

 Freaky is the new film by the team that gave us Happy Death Day in 2017 and stars Kathryn Newton as Millie a young girl morning the loss of her father and one night while waiting for a ride home from a local football game she comes across the infamous Billsfield Butcher (Vince Vaughn) and through an ancient ritual the two switch bodies with Millie in the Butcher’s body and vice versa and things could get deadly if the situation isn’t reversed within 24 hours.

 

Freaky is a lot of fun and there were many times where I had a big smile on my face and laughed quite a bit out loud in the cinema, first off the film has some terrific gooey violence that earns that MA15 rating and I just got a real kick out of and there were one or two in particular that I enjoyed the most and they made smile.

 

Also the film gets a lot out of its body switch premise and Mr Vaughn is a lot of fun when he’s imitating Millie and there are also some nice heartfelt moments with his performance that worked well also and also when I thought about the film some more I thought that Mr Vaughn would make a good Captain Ginyu of the Ginyu Force from Dragon Ball, he’s a fun villain that would suit someone like Mr Vaughn well.

 

As for the rest of the kids in the film well their okay but their characters can sometimes feel like the typical high school characters you get in this kind of film, there’s the best friends, the pricks on the football team, the cute boy among others and hey all of that works here well and I enjoyed those characters.

 

And so that was Freaky and I had a lot of fun here and it comes highly recommended, 4 out of 5.

Film Review - The Witches (2020)

The Witches is based off the book by Roald Dahl and is directed by Robert Zemeckis and co-written by Guillermo Del Toro and Alfonso Cuaron is a producer on the film as well, the story concerns a young boy (Jazhir Bruno) who goes to live with his grandmother (Octavia Spencer) and she warns him about evil Witches who hate children and now the Grand High Witch (Anne Hathaway) has devised a plan to rid the world of children by turning them into mice.

 

The Witches is a fun movie, Mr Zemeckis can still deliver somewhat of a fun experience somewhat and the film has a lot of his technical trademarks on it most notably a great musical score by Mr Alan Silvestri who did the legendary score for his Back to the Future and crafted that great Avengers theme which I got a real joy out of hearing in a big cinema screen plus there are some fun sequences with the mice that definitely have that influence of Mr Cuaron as well.

 

One big negative I have to mention is Ms Anne Hathaway, someone I have been a big fan of for a long time but here she goes so far over the top it becomes groaning to listen to after a while and I got sick of hearing that voice, now to be fair Mr Zemeckis can get great comedic performances out of his actors the criminally underrated Death Becomes Her is a prime example of this but this one really didn’t work.

 

Also the more I’ve come to think on the film I have found myself wondering what a Del Toro directed and Cuaron produced version of this movie would’ve looked like as I have pondered that Del Toro’s extraordinary imagination would’ve been a great fit for Dahl’s writing as a movie perhaps it would have pushed more of the technical wizardry, more of that childlike horror feel and more of that visual wonder like in Pacific Rim where I just sat there with my mouth wide open smiling from ear to ear.

 

Or indeed the Zemeckis that made Death Becomes Her that was a dark comedy with great comedic performances that didn’t feel like a bombastic cartoon either way as fun as this movie is I can’t help but feel that either of those would have been better than the movie we got which despite Hathaway’s cartoonish voice is a fun ride that I did enjoy, 3 out of 5.