soul plane movie review

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Raunchy comedy for adults only.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Comic peril and tension.

Extremely explicit sexual humor, references, situa

Very strong language including racial epithets.

Drinking and drug use.

Parents need to know that this movie has a great deal of vulgar humor and crude material that may be offensive to some audiences. The movie walks a very thin line between breaking down stereotypes with humor and perpetuating them to get a cheap laugh, sometimes crossing it altogether. The movie includes strong,…

Violence & Scariness

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Sex, Romance & Nudity

Extremely explicit sexual humor, references, situations.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this movie has a great deal of vulgar humor and crude material that may be offensive to some audiences. The movie walks a very thin line between breaking down stereotypes with humor and perpetuating them to get a cheap laugh, sometimes crossing it altogether. The movie includes strong, frequent profanity, including "bitch" and the "N" word. The treatment of the movie's gay character is a lipsticked caricature who's the target -- not the source -- of punchlines. There's a high level of very explicit sexual humor throughout the film. Sexual acts are described in great detail, and a frolicking couple attempt to have sex in every area of the plane. Characters partake of drugs, drink heavily to drown sorrows, and refer to "playa" lifestyles in nothing but positive terms. On the other hand, Nashawn's decision to do give something back to the community and to take responsibility for his actions is an important theme of the movie. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (4)
• Kids say (1)

Based on 4 parent reviews

Funny but for older teens only

What's the story.

After a horrific flying experience, Nashawn Wade (Kevin Hart) sues the uptight, white airline and sets out to make a difference with his $100 million settlement. He starts "NWA", the first airline aimed broadly at African Americans, but more particularly at "playas". Nashawn joins a motley crew of characters on NWA's first flight from LA to New York, aboard the pimped-out, purple plush plane piloted by Captain Mack (Snoop Dogg). By accident, the Hunkee (pronounced "honkey") family of passive-aggressive father (Tom Arnold), father's blond and busty girlfriend, Barbara (Missi Pyle), rebellious daughter and father-imitating young son end up on NWA due to a mix-up. Other passengers include Nashawn's doe-eyed former high school sweetheart (K.D. Aubert), and a libidinous couple intent on getting into the Mile High Club. Of course, the ride gets bumpy. The Hunkee daughter turns 18, prompting a dance party in the impossibly huge upper deck, much to the distress of her protective father. Captain Mack, afraid of heights, is incapacitated by drugs, co-pilot Gaeman (Godfrey) is the victim of a hot-tub mishap, leaving Nashawn to land the "playas" plane safely.

Is It Any Good?

SOUL PLANE is 86 minutes of silliness ranging from sweet to raunchy aimed at the "mature" audience who hasn't outgrown poop jokes. But, you might be able to dial your hopes down enough to forgive all that and find some enjoyment in the movie's cheerful vulgarity and the pleasure it takes in stomping on any notion of political correctness. The biggest and best joke of the movie is the plane itself, with First Class a palatial area worthy of MTV's Cribs and "Low" Class a close cousin to a run-down city bus complete with Colt 45 ads, overhead handles to grip and lockers that require a quarter to open.

This movie has a heart, even if it has three sizes yet to grow. Nashawn and his ex-girlfriend have a tender scene where he explains why he left her, and Mr. Hunkee and his daughter have an open discussion about their conflicts. Novice writers Bo Zenga and Chuck Wilson join second-time director, Jessy Terrero, to create this visually entertaining and often funny spoof that gleefully revisits the same airspace covered in Airplane . The jokes range from packaged to fresh, but the most engaging aspect of the comedy is the fun the cast is clearly having on the set. As the security guards, comediennes Mo'Nique Imes-Jackson and Sommore are so funny they could easily have their own sit-com.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how some of the other characters respond to his decisions and how the other characters do or do not take responsibility themselves. Families could choose five different characters and discuss the stereotypes that they represent, in particular how these caricatures might limit how we see the person as a whole. Also, what value does humor have in this movie for tackling issues that are difficult to discuss?

Movie Details

• In theaters : May 27, 2004
• On DVD or streaming : September 6, 2004
• Cast : Method Man , Snoop Dogg , Tom Arnold
• Director : Jessy Terrero
• Inclusion Information : Black actors
• Studio : MGM/UA
• Genre : Comedy
• Run time : 87 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : strong sexual content, language and some drug use
• Last updated : July 31, 2023

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FILM IN REVIEW

FILM IN REVIEW; 'Soul Plane'

By Stephen Holden

• May 28, 2004

Directed by Jessy Terrero

R, 86 minutes

You've never seen (and hopefully never boarded) an aircraft operated like the wobbly purple plane that bounces like a rubber toy on the way to takeoff in ''Soul Plane,'' which opens nationwide today. This hectic farce, which pushes every envelope, is so broad and relentlessly raunchy that it makes a spoof like ''Airplane'' seem as demure as a vintage drawing-room comedy.

The movie, directed by Jessy Terrero from a screenplay by Bo Zenga and Chuck Wilson, depicts the raucous cross-country journey of flight No. 069 on NWA Airlines. The company was founded by Nashawn (Kevin Hart), an unemployed, self-described entrepreneur and his cousin Muggsy (Method Man) with $100 million that Nashawn won in a lawsuit against a carrier that lost his beloved pooch. NWA bills itself as the first full-service airline catering to the ''urban traveler.''

Its maiden flight, from Los Angeles to New York, may be the wildest coast-to-coast party ever given in the air. Above the main cabin is a disco whose roof looks out on the stars. The dining ranges from fancy (Roederer Cristal Champagne, filet mignon and lobster, for first-class passengers) to atrocious (Colt 45 and greasy fried chicken, one piece to a customer) for everybody else stuck in ''low class.''

One of those unfortunates is Elvis Hunkee (Tom Arnold), the divorced father of two rebellious children, who is traveling with his trashy girlfriend, Barbara (Missi Pyle). Smiling gamely with each humiliation, Elvis is the designated clueless white man in a movie that stretches every cliché of African-American sexuality way beyond caricature.

Not everyone will be thrilled by the movie, which is one long dirty (and occasionally very funny) joke. ''Soul Plane'' gleefully flaunts every black pop culture stereotype that Spike Lee savaged in ''Bamboozled.'' For long stretches, it really is a flying minstrel show of studs, sluts and lustful stoned-out layabouts, ogling one another and making lewd remarks. In a typical joke, a blind man lasciviously fingers a baked potato and goes into paroxysms of ecstasy.

Snoop Dogg, at his drollest, plays the pilot, Captain Mack, fresh out of prison, with his sneaky sideways smile and slit-eyed glances mocking everything in sight. But once the plane takes off, this coolest of clowns confesses that he's terrified of heights. When he passes out from an overdose of magic mushrooms belonging to his co-pilot, Gaeman (note the pun), the flight seems doomed. But never fear. In airplane disaster films and the movies that spoof them, the jet always lands safely.

''Soul Plane'' is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has strong language and sexual parody. STEPHEN HOLDEN

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Soul Plane Reviews

There are some funny things in here, but it mostly made me sad. If this was a better movie, some of the material would have really been great...

Full Review | May 11, 2020

tries to do too much and fails

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 17, 2016

Raunchy comedy for adults only.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 28, 2010

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Aug 7, 2008

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 14, 2007

Soul Plane is like seeing an uncomfortably unfunny stand-up comedy routine acted out and stretched to a feature-length film.

Full Review | Original Score: .5/4 | Sep 29, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Apr 1, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 6, 2005

Those expecting an African-American Airplane! will be disappointed. This movie isn't even as subtle as that.

Full Review | Sep 16, 2005

Surprisingly enough (in fact, I am shocked), this film gets a lot of laughs.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jun 26, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 2, 2005

...it's hard not to be offended by a sequence in which an Arab man boards the airplane - much to the shock and horror of everyone around him.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Oct 31, 2004

How best to explain a film this mean-spirited, this unfunny--this dispiriting?

Full Review | Original Score: 0/4 | Sep 28, 2004

A s******ing style of humour that might have seemed funny in theory, but virtually nothing sparks on screen.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Sep 19, 2004

Nothing more than racial stereotype after racial stereotype.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Sep 17, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Aug 28, 2004

Come back the Wayans Brothers, all is forgiven. Even Scary Movie 2.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Aug 19, 2004

Cries out for the guiding hand of one of the Zucker Brothers or, even better, a genuine satirist like John Ridley, who wrote the subversive Undercover Brother.

Full Review | Aug 8, 2004

The Airplane! formula gets reworked as a raunchy sendup of black racial stereotypes, but the movie has an aura of bad sketch comedy.

Full Review | Jun 16, 2004

Uneven, but often very funny.... When it spoofs black culture, the movie connects solidly.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jun 12, 2004

"We waste our money so you don't have to."

"We waste our money, so you don't have to."

Movie Review

US Release Date: 05-28-2004

Directed by: Jessy Terrero

Starring ▸ ▾

• Tom Arnold ,  as
• Kevin Hart ,  as
• Method Man ,  as
• Snoop Dogg ,  as
• Captain Mack
• K.D. Aubert ,  as
• Godfrey ,  as
• D.L. Hughley ,  as
• Monique ,  as
• Missi Pyle ,  as
• Gary Anthony Williams ,  as
• John Witherspoon ,  as
• Arielle Kebbel ,  as
• Heather Hunkee
• Ryan Pinkston ,  as
• Billy Hunkee
• Karl Malone ,  as
• Terry Crews ,  as
• Sofia Vergara as

Snoop Dogg in Soul Plane .

Soul Plane is a sleek, raunchy comedy that features some funny moments, especially if you appreciate bawdy bathroom humor. The writers clearly have never met a stereotype they didn't like. From the average-joe white-guy played by Tom Arnold (his last name is Hunkee) to the average-joe black-guy played by Kevin Hart, there isn't a character in sight with more than two dimensions. Granted this is a silly spoof of a comedy meant to parody the style of the old Airplane! movie (which was itself a parody of the old Airport movies) still a bit more characterization never hurts. And I for one am extremely tired of the flaming-black-gay-guy character who is always the tackiest sissy on the planet and is the butt of every crude joke imaginable. Just once I would like to see a black gay character who doesn't have a broke wrist and a lisp.

After Nashawn Wade (Hart) has a humiliating and traumatic experience on a commercial flight (his butt gets stuck in the plane's toilet among other things) he sues and receives a $100 million settlement. He uses his instant wealth to create his own airline called NWA. The plane is tricked-out and ghetto-fabulous. It is metallic purple and chrome colored, features an onboard dance club, live DJs, hip-hop music, scantily clad flight attendants and even a bathroom attendant played by D.L. Hughley. And of course there is Snoop Dogg as Captain Mack the pimped-out pilot of flight #O-69 from Los Angeles to New York.

Method Man has a few good moments as the likable Muggsy, Nashawn's goofy, always-messing-up cousin. Comic Mo'Nique plays a loud-mouthed security officer talking shit to the passengers as they pass through the metal detector. Missi Pyle (as Mr. Hunkee's horny girlfriend - those facial expressions are priceless), Ryan Pinkston (as Mr. Hunkee's wanna-be-black son) and John Witherspoon (as a blind man who has a sexual experience with a baked potato - you have to see it to believe it) all add to the fun, but what Soul Plane lacks, ironically, is soul. We are supposed to root for Nashawn but the movie doesn't create much motivation for doing so and this only takes the focus away from the laughs.

Some funny and outrageous moments and a few mildly offensive jokes are not enough to keep Soul Plane airborne.

Tom Arnold and Missi Pyle in Soul Plane.

Soul Plane feeds on stereotypes.  The vacationing white Hunkee family just came from Crackerland.  The over weight, loud mouth black women giving everyone a hard time, "When the buzzer pops, nigga, you stop!"  Barbara being nervous about being the only white woman on the plane.

Poking fun at stereotypes can certainly be entertaining, if done right.  Unfortunately there is not much creativity to be found here.  At least the film makers were brave enough to show people reacting suspiciously to a middle eastern looking man getting on board the plane.

Snoop Dog has a few decent lines, such as, "In a hot second, I'll be hittin' them switches and gettin' this bitch pumpin' and jumpin'. So screw your shit on tight and enjoy the flight."   Which the wanna-be-black, white kid has to translate for his Dad. 

Soul Plane too often attempts jokes that never work.  A Texas airline has cow patterned seats and all of the white passengers lock their doors as the purple plane goes by on the run way.   Patrick was offended by the gay steward, but he has the funniest scenes.  The first one is when he serves the Hunkee family beverages and the second is when he races to the cock pit with other stereotypical gay men.

Photos © Copyright MGM (2004)

© 2000 - 2017 Three Movie Buffs. All Rights Reserved.

‘Soul Plane’ Movie Review (2004)

By Steve Davis

Soul Plane gives new definitions to flying in style, too bad the film has none. Just imagine if Snoop Dogg was piloting your plane, a plane that comes equipped with thousand inch rims on the landing gear and a hydraulic system. Now imagine an hour and a half of mind-numbing comedy and you have Soul Plane .

Nashawn Wade (Kevin Hart) is a passenger who sues an airline after a humiliating experience and in turn is awarded a huge settlement, and decides to start his own airline. So with the controls of the airline industry in a new breed of hands Soul Plane is ready to crash land into theaters.

When you see a stand-up comedian, you know they are a hack when they come out and start doing jokes about airline travel. “I mean what is the deal with airplane food?” This is quickly followed by the newest sign of a hack comedian as the point out the differences between white people and black people, yeah haven’t heard that before. Soul Plane is a terrible combination of both.

On top of that, this movie has a ton of flaws, starting with a loosely constructed plot that skips around and struggles to get you set up for weak punch-lines. Another problem is that for a majority of the movie, the sight gags are the jokes, instead of having them in the background and the movie itself being funny.

That being said, hack stand-up comedians do get laughs, and sometimes they even kill. And to be fair, sometimes Soul Plane is funny, playing up on racial stereotypes, or the differences between races. It is not as subtle or insightful as the “Dave Chappelle Show”, but it is occasionally funny.

The other thing Soul Plane has going for it is a lot of cameos, including “stars” like Tom Arnold, Snoop Dogg, and Method Man who pretty much sleepwalk through their performances. Kevin Hart is the center of the film playing an annoying alter-ego of Chris Tucker on speed.

Soul Plane never makes it out of the realm of stereotypical jokes, nor does it break any new comedic ground in its mediocre attempts to point out the difference between black people and white people in a “what if” scenario that is never able to take off. It does offer a few laughs and has hip-hop star power, but this plane is not worth the price of the ticket.

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Soul Plane Review

27 Aug 2004

In some ways, this is one of the most egalitarian films ever made. Former music video director Terrero leaves no stone unturned, no barrier of taste unbroken, in attempting to insult every single member of the human race.

Blacks, whites, homosexuals, women, Catholics, Muslims and Michael Jackson are all subjected to degrading and stereotypical depictions of such offensiveness that they’d make Ron Atkinson blush.

All that might be forgivable if the film were funny. Billed as the ‘urban’ Airplane! , Soul Plane tries to ape the joke-per-minute style of the ZAZ classic, but manages a miss-rate of nigh-on 100 per cent. Add a boring story and characters that could only have amused were they sucked into the jet engines, and you have a serious disaster movie.

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Soul Plane Review

MGM should be ashamed. This is some of the ugliest stuff I've seen produced by a major studio. We're better than this.

I don't know what's more depressing about the alleged new comedy Soul Plane , the fact that there is an audience for this brain-eating dreck or that there is an evil cabal somewhere in Hollywood that knowingly produces movies catering to it. Soul Plane is the cinematic equivalent of crack. And the only good news is -- it's not addictive.

What they started with was "black Airplane!'" a decent enough way to update a classic comedy. I was actually looking forward to it, having heard through the grapevine that it was funny and that Snoop Dog was good in his role. But the rumors were wrong. What they ended up with is one long, painful sketch. Where Airplane! had the barest semblance of a plot, Soul Plane ' has none. A bunch of stereotypical black people and their white foils get on a black-run airplane, fly in it, and land. That's it.

What the hour and twenty minutes are filled up with is racial stereotyping and toilet humor and blowjob jokes. If you like the cartoons in Hustler magazine -- this movie is for you. But the toxicity of what they're selling here is not good for anybody. In the audience I saw it with there were children, some as young as six, with their parents who watched while couples had sex and were brought to screaming orgasms onscreen.

Dick jokes? They had those too. Along with gay jokes, shit jokes, fart jokes and blind people jokes. In my notes that I scribbled there in the darkness of the movie theater I actually wrote "man has sex with potato." But trust me. The note is funnier than what's onscreen.

Among the stellar cast is Snoop Dogg who got the biggest applause playing an ex-con pilot who doesn't know how to fly and who smokes weed and eats mushrooms. Hilarious, right? Then there's Tom Arnold, his girlfriend and family, who are the only white people on this plane. Tom's girlfriend apparently likes black men and their long dicks, her eyes bugging out whenever Mandingo comes near. And just so we know it's topical, when a black kid starts flirting with his

white daughter, Tom wisecracks: "Hey watch it there, Kobe."

Tom also reprises his toilet scene from Austin Powers, sitting on the john of the plane and trying to defecate to the soothing sounds of "Push It" thanks to a little help from the in-flight toilet attendant. Yes, Tom should be proud of his toilet work. You might say it's become his signature.

Add some boob-exposing, booty-shaking flight attendants and one gay male attendant who is doing the black version of "Johnny" from Airplane! and you get the general idea. I don't mind raw, I don't mind sexual as long as there is some wit attached. This movie is an exercise in anything but.

All in all, it's some of the ugliest stuff I've seen produced by a major studio. And some of the most racist. We started down this road with Scary Movie and the black-ification of movies from the '80s like Johnson Family Vacation and Big Mama's House, it has become the lazy studio executive's way to be "creative." And I'm sure they can show you graphs of how black audiences show up for this awful crap. Well, enough already. I don't care how much money these movies make, you can only take so much of this trend before you cry foul. With all the things in the world to make a movie about, they make this. The fact that the filmmakers dare to put their names on this thing is amazing to me. It's like claiming credit for inventing syphilis.

If you're not angered by this, if you brush this off as harmless fun, if you think it's all just part of our culture (you know like gangsta rap) then I don't want to know you.

I don't care what race you are, we're better than this.

MGM should be ashamed.

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

• Things get raucously funny aboard the maiden flight of a black-owned airline, thanks to some last-minute passenger additions.
• Why just fly when you can soar with soul? After a humiliating experience on an airplane, Nashawn Wade sues the airline and is awarded a huge settlement. Determined to make good with the money, Nashawn creates the full service airline of his dreams, complete with sexy stewardesses, funky music, a hot onboard dance club, and a bathroom attendant. Departing from all-new Terminal X in Los Angeles, Soul Plane gives "fly" a whole new meaning taking its passengers on a maiden voyage full of comedy. — Anonymous

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Soul Plane Review

By David Levine

Facts and Figures

Year : 2004

Run time : 86 mins

In Theaters : Friday 28th May 2004

Box Office USA : $13.9M

Box Office Worldwide : $13.9M

Budget : $16M

Distributed by : MGM

Contactmusic.com : 2.5 / 5

Rotten Tomatoes : 18% Fresh: 18 Rotten: 81

IMDB : 4.2 / 10

Cast & Crew

Director : Jessy Terrero

Producer : David Scott Rubin

Screenwriter : Bo Zenga , Chuck Wilson

Starring : Tom Arnold as Mr. Hunkee, Kevin Hart as Nashawn, Method Man as Muggsy, Snoop Dogg as Captain Mack, K. D. Aubert as Giselle, Godfrey as Gaeman, D. L. Hughley as Johnny, Mo'Nique as Jamiqua, Sofía Vergara as Blanca, John Witherspoon as Blind Man, Stacey Travis as Flight Attendant

Also starring : K.D Aubert , David Scott Rubin , Bo Zenga , Chuck Wilson

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SOUL PLANE – Audio Review

Things get raucously funny aboard the maiden flight of a black-owned airline, thanks to some last-minute passenger additions. Nashawn Wade sues an airline after a horrible experience and receives a huge compensation. Determined to make good with the money, he creates a full-service airline leading to comical situations.

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Pixar's "Soul" is about a jazz pianist who has a near-death experience and gets stuck in the afterlife, contemplating his choices and regretting the existence that he mostly took for granted. Pixar veteran Pete Docter is the credited co-director, alongside playwright and screenwriter Kemp Powers , who wrote Regina King's outstanding "One Night in Miami." Despite its weighty themes, the project has a light touch. A musician might liken "Soul" to an extended riff, or a five-finger exercise, which is very much in the spirit of jazz, an improvisation-centered art that's honorably and accurately depicted onscreen whenever Joe or another musician character starts to perform. 

The prologue peaks with Joe (voiced by Jamie Foxx ) falling into an open manhole and ending up comatose in a hospital. It's a bummer twist ending to a great day in which Joe was finally offered a staff job at his school, then nailed an audition with a visiting jazz legend named Dorothea Williams ( Angela Bassett ) who had invited him to play with her that night. After his near-lethal pratfall, Joe's soul is sent to the Great Beyond—basically a cosmic foyer with a long walkway, where souls line up before heading toward a white light. Joe isn't ready for The End, so he flees in the other direction, falls off the walkway, and ends up in a brightly colored yet still-purgatorial zone known as The Great Before. 

The Great Before is a bit like the setting of Albert Brooks' metaphysical comedy " Defending Your Life ." It has its own rules and procedures, and is part of a larger spiritual ecosystem wherein certain things have to happen for other things to happen. There's a touch of video game structure/plotting to the entire premise, and it's reinforced by the stylized drawing of Great Before characters in supervisory positions over mentors and proto-souls: they're two-dimensional, shape-shifting Cubist figures made of elegant neon lines.

The purpose of the Great Before is to mentor fresh souls so that they can discover a "spark" that will drive them to a happy and productive life down on earth. Joe is motivated mainly by a desire to avoid the white light and get back to earth somehow (and play that amazing gig he'd been waiting his whole life for), so he assumes the identity of an acclaimed Swedish psychologist and mentors a problem blip known only by her number, 22 ( Tina Fey ). Twenty-two is a blasé cynic who has rejected mentorship from some of the greatest figures in mortal history, including Carl Jung and Abraham Lincoln. Can Joe break the streak and help her find her purpose? Have you ever seen a Pixar film before? Of course. It's mainly about how things happen in these films, rarely about what happens. 

That having been said, there's a nifty comic twist about halfway through the film that livens up "Soul" just when it was starting to drag, and it's best not to spoil it here (even though trailers and ads already have). Suffice to say that 22 eventually does find her spark, although it takes a lot of effort and more than a few wild misadventures to get there; and that Joe reexamines his years on earth as a genial but meek teacher and finds them wanting. He didn't make as many friends as he should have and was consumed by fears that he traded his childhood dream of becoming a working jazz artist for a more ordinary life. (Joe's mother, played by Phylicia Rashad , is not supportive of his music.) The downside is that this turns "Soul" into another of a string of animated films (including " The Princess and the Frog " and " Spies in Disguise ") in which a rare Black leading character is transformed into something else for the majority of a film's running time.

Is this the first midlife crisis movie released by Pixar? Possibly, although Woody in the " Toy Story " films seemed to have a touch of that affliction as well. The movie is a bit shaggy and disorganized with its mythology/rules—something that Pixar is usually meticulous about, to the point of being obsessive. I'm not convinced it adds up to all much in the grand scheme by the time the final sequence arrives. The film's message could be summed up as, "Don't get so hung up on ambition that you forget to stop and smell the flowers." A birthday card could've told you that. And some of the jokes are a tad DreamWorksy, like the bit where a lost soul returns to earth and realizes that he's completely wasted his life by working in hedge funds; a ruthless international mega-corporation like Disney— which stuck most of its 20th Century Fox repertory holdings in a "vault" last year  to push people to rent or purchase new Disney product, and that once sued day care centers for putting its characters on murals without permission—has no business lecturing anybody else about the moral emptiness of materialism. 

And yet, " Cars " and its various derivatives aside, Pixar has never released a flat-out bad film. And this is a good one: pleasant and clever, with a generous heart, committed voice acting, and some of the kookiest images in Pixar history (including a ghostly, pink, land-bound pirate vessel belonging to a "mystic without borders," with tie-died sails, a peace symbol anchor, and Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" blasting on a continuous loop). The company has been entrenched at the center of popular culture for decades, its reputation fortified by animated features that blend innovative design and graphics, lively physical and verbal comedy, impeccably staged action, and a sensibility that one of my old college film textbooks called "sprezzatura"—described in Baldassare Castiglione's 1528 The Book of the Courtier  as " ... a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art, and make whatever one does or says seem to be without effort, and almost without any thought about it." In other words, Pixar makes it all look easy, even when hundreds of people worked on the project long enough to justify a "production babies" section of the end credits.

Despite feeling like rather minor Pixar overall, "Soul" will prove to be of historical interest because, despite the transformation issue, and when it isn't getting wrapped up in goofy afterlife shenanigans, it's the most unapologetically Black Pixar project yet released. Its portrayal of jazz is not only accurate in terms of its soundtrack of classic cuts and depiction of performance (the piano and trumpet playing is as correct as anything in Spike Lee's " Mo' Better Blues ") but also its wider cultural context. 

In a flashback, Joe's dad, who introduced him to jazz, describes the music as one of the greatest African-American contributions to world culture. There are many other touches in the film that testify to the story's anchoring in an experience beyond the white, middle-class suburban norms that Pixar embraces by default. There's even a visit to a Black barbershop showcasing an array of male hairstyles; a joke about the difficulty of a Black man hailing a taxi in New York City ("This would be hard even if I wasn't wearing a hospital gown!"); and a reference to Charles Drew, a Black physician credited with pioneering the blood transfusion. This distinction gives weight to lines that might not have registered in a Pixar film with white protagonists, such as 22's quip, "You can't crush a soul here. That's what life on earth is for."

Available on Disney+ on December 25.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Soul (2020)

Rated PG for thematic elements and some language.

102 minutes

Jamie Foxx as Joe Gardner (voice)

Tina Fey as 22 (voice)

Ahmir-Khalib Thompson as Curly (voice)

Phylicia Rashād as Libba Gardner (voice)

Daveed Diggs as Paul (voice)

John Ratzenberger as (voice)

Richard Ayoade as Jerry (voice)

Graham Norton as Moonwind (voice)

Rachel House as Terry (voice)

Alice Braga as Jerry (voice)

Angela Bassett as Dorothea

• Pete Docter

Co-Director

• Kemp Powers

Writer (story and screenplay by)

Cinematographer.

• Matt Aspbury
• Ian Megibben
• Kevin Nolting

Composer (jazz compositions and arrangements by)

• Jon Batiste
• Trent Reznor
• Atticus Ross

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