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“SOUL DOCTOR: Untold Story Of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach & Nina Simone” In Theaters Feb. 2023

Set in an era rampant with racism, segregation, and post-war antisemitism, Soul Doctor illustrates a unique perspective on how Black culture, specifically gospel and soul music, helped revive the Jewish spirit in the aftermath of the Holocaust. This timely film offers an enlightening perspective on Jewish/Black synergy.

The film is a poignant, entertaining portrayal of how music and spirituality formed the basis for the unlikely friendship between Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach , the father of popular Jewish music, and Nina Simone , the legendary High Priestess of Soul. Most importantly, it shows the power of two individuals who not only impacted each other but also woke up the world.

Based on the exuberant Broadway musical, Soul Doctor was filmed live on stage at the Israel Festival and is set for an exclusive preview on the big screen beginning Thursday, December 1st at 7 PM at the AMC Times Square in New York City. In February 2023 , in celebration of Black History Month, Soul Doctor will be released at select theaters nationwide.

Soul Doctor tells the story of the beloved yet controversial Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, a modern-day troubadour who ignited the spirit of millions around the world with his soul-stirring melodies, transformative storytelling, and boundless love. Following his childhood escape from Nazi Austria, the young Rabbi formed an unlikely friendship with legendary jazz singer Nina Simone, who introduced him to Soul and Gospel.

Soul Doctor Movie Trailer 2022

“Soul Doctor is a tribute to Nina Simone’s enormous influence on so many people, including Shlomo Carlebach,” said Susannah Heschel, Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College and daughter of civil rights icon Rabbi A.J. Heschel. “By inspiring and encouraging Shlomo, Nina Simone contributed to the extraordinary revival of Jewish music and spirit immortalized by Shlomo.”

Fusing his roots with his new inspiration, Shlomo created a revolutionary musical sound, composing songs that continue to be the main body of Jewish musical standards. The “Jewish Gospel/Soul” experience he introduced to synagogue worship is celebrated across all Jewish denominations today.

Soul Doctor won Best Picture at the New York Kwanzaa Film Festival and was the feature presentation at this year’s Bloody Sunday Bridge Crossing in Selma, Alabama.

As an epilogue to the film, we are treated to a montage of never-before-seen footage of Nina Simone, Shlomo Carlebach, and other historical scenes from the era.

For tickets and information, visit www.souldoctormovie.com .

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Film version of ‘Soul Doctor,’ the Shlomo Carlebach-Nina Simone musical, to hit US theaters for 1 night

( JTA ) — A filmed version of “Soul Doctor,” the 2013 Broadway musical about the life of the influential and controversial rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, will play in 600 movie theaters nationwide for one night only, on Tuesday.

The performance was filmed at the Israel Festival in Jerusalem in 2018, as part of celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of Israel’s founding. 

“Soul Doctor,” written by Daniel Wise, earned mixed reviews during a short Broadway run. The show follows Carlebach from his childhood in Austria in the 1930s to New York, where he becomes one of the most well-known Jewish spiritual figures of the 20th century, working to fuse the modern musical sensibilities of the 1960s with religious liturgy. It also chronicles his friendship with Nina Simone, the iconic singer and civil rights activist, whom he meets at a downtown jazz club. Given his family’s experience of antisemitism, Carlebach empathizes with Simone’s struggles against racism.

Simone’s daughter, Lisa, who produced a Grammy-nominated Netflix documentary about her mother, is an executive producer on the “Soul Doctor” film. Jeremy Chess, the original Broadway show’s producer, along with Jerome Levy and Chandra McQueen, are also producers of the film.

The show does not reckon with the allegations of sexual misconduct first raised against Carlebach in 1998, which include abusing his power as a spiritual leader with, among other things, unwanted touching and kissing of several women. The allegations were scrutinized again by Jewish communities across the country in the wake of the #MeToo movement in 2017. Several rabbis and congregations have moved away from using Carlebach’s music in their houses of worship in recent years . His daughter, Neshama, herself a musician, has struggled with how to uphold her father’s musical and spiritual legacy .

Both Naomi King, the civil rights activist and sister-in-law of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Susannah Heschel, the Dartmouth Jewish studies professor and daughter of civil rights-era activist Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, watched the “Soul Doctor” film and commented on it in a recent press release.

“Any person watching this movie, it’ll shake ’em, move ’em and change ‘em to help make this a better world,” King said.

Heschel said the film “is a tribute to Nina Simone’s enormous influence. By inspiring and encouraging Shlomo Carlebach, Nina contributed to the extraordinary revival of Jewish music and spirit immortalized by Shlomo.”

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• Cast & crew

Soul Doctor

Journey of a Rockstar Rabbi is a Broadway musical that details the life of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, with music and lyrics by Shlomo Carlebach and David Schechter, and book and direction by Da... Read all Journey of a Rockstar Rabbi is a Broadway musical that details the life of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, with music and lyrics by Shlomo Carlebach and David Schechter, and book and direction by Daniel Wise. Journey of a Rockstar Rabbi is a Broadway musical that details the life of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, with music and lyrics by Shlomo Carlebach and David Schechter, and book and direction by Daniel Wise.

• Richard Cerato
• Emily Padgett
• 1 Critic review

• Nina Simone

• Nina's Mother
• The Chazzen From Hell
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• June 13, 2023 (United States)
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Award-winning executive producer Lisa Simone previews the movie "Soul Doctor" about her mom Nina Simone and Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach

Soul Doctor , the musical film about the controversial Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach , and his relationship with legendary jazz singer and civil rights icon Nina Simone , will be screened in cinemas June 13 , in honor of the 10th anniversary since the production premiered on Broadway.

Nina Simone's daughter and executive producer of Soul Doctor, Lisa Simone spoke with WBGO's Doug Doyle about the film and the legacy of her mom.

Lisa Simone says she first learned about the unique relationship and collaboration between her mother and the rabbi was once she went to the Broadway production of Soul Doctor on Broadway.

"I didn't know what to expect but I was humbled and open wide when I watched it. I was touched. Here I am today and so overjoyed to be a part of the production that concentrates on a period in her life that we don't really talk much about, where there is still a little innocence."

Conceived by Jeremy Chess , created by David Schechter and Daniel S. Wise, with direction by Wise, Soul Doctor has a book by Wise, lyrics by Schechter and music by Shlomo Carlebach .

Simone says the film focuses on a time when her mother, born Eunice Waymon, had not taken on the name Nina Simone for very long.

"It was a time of youth. Discovery and innocence are the two words constantly pop out at me, two words that when you think of Nina Simone don't usually come to mind."

The filmed production stars Tony nominee Josh Young as Shlomo, Nya as Nina Simone, and Emily Padgett as Ruth.

Lisa admits she stands on her mother's shoulders but that she had to find her own way in life.

"I had to learn and appreciate and to understand a little bit more what she was doing, why she was doing it, what her intentions were and that she was doing the absolute best she could."

You can SEE the entire interview with Lisa Simone here .

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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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‘Soul’ Review: From the Minds Behind ‘Inside Out’ Comes an Even Deeper Look at What Makes People Tick

Pixar gives audiences a fresh way to think about the dimension that defines their personality, while broadening its cultural horizons to feature the studio's first predominantly Black cast.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

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Where do people get their personalities? Do parents play a part, or are such things somehow determined before birth? For centuries, doctors of psychology, doctors of philosophy and doctors of theology have contributed their thoughts on the subject, but the latest breakthrough comes from another kind of doctor entirely: Pete Docter , the big-idea Pixar brain behind outside-the-box toons “Inside Out” and “Up,” who takes a look deep inside and comes up with another intuitive, easy-to-embrace metaphor for — dare I say it — the meaning of life.

The result is “ Soul ,” a whimsical, musical and boldly metaphysical dramedy about what makes each and everybody tick, featuring a cast of characters who don’t have bodies at all. “Soul” opens with the death of its down-on-his-luck hero, middle school band teacher Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx), a frustrated pianist who aces a jazz band audition, then steps out into the street, where he narrowly avoids being smushed by construction workers and crushed by an oncoming car, only to fall through a manhole to his untimely end.

This is not at all where one expects a kids movie to begin. Not even “Bambi” went so far as to kill its main character before the opening credits. But then, “Soul” plays hardly anything by the rules. Frankly, this may not be a kids movie at all, although releasing directly to Disney Plus subscription service on Dec. 25 (amid COVID-19’s second wave) suggests the studio is treating it as such. Joe’s death isn’t scary, but it asks young audiences to acknowledge the issue of mortality in a way that few films dare. And then, it proceeds to bend — although “shape” might be a more accurate word — their understanding of what happens before and after people’s lives on Earth.

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Just before he bites the dust, Joe lands his big break, earning a shot to play with jazz legend Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett) at the Half Note club. Nearly all his life, Joe has wanted nothing more than to be a musician. He’s good, too, given the improvisations we’re privy to here — in class, in rehearsal and later, in the solitude of his own apartment. So it’s not surprising that he might be alarmed to find himself on a conveyor belt through the Great Beyond, the void-like zone Docter and production designer Steve Pilcher have imagined late souls enter just before they are zapped into oblivion.

Again, this sequence could have been intimidating for young viewers — or old ones, for that matter — though the movie treats it lightly, allowing Joe (who’s the only soul with second thoughts about the afterlife) to fall off the escalator and plunge through several dimensions to the Great Before, a more Elysian Fields-ian place with lilac skies and periwinkle grass where giggly, vaguely Casper the Friendly Ghost-like souls are prepped for Earth.

It’s an awe-inspiring answer to an impossible challenge: How to animate the not-yet-animate? But this is a Pixar movie, so it’s no surprise that the team opts to cutesify the abstract idea of a pre-corporeal self, giving each soul googly eyes and a pure glow. What we see are adorable amorphous blobs with trippy chromatic aberration around the edges — color fringing that suggests the virtual lenses can barely capture their elusive luminosity (and the opposite of old-school animation, where characters were “contained” by thick black lines).

There are rules for this realm, which recall the ingenious way Docter translated the notion of human emotion into clean cartoon terms with “Inside Out.” Nascent souls appear here and are guided along by mentors — those who have already lived and seem keen to pass their passions along to the next generation. Once new souls discover their “spark,” they’re given an entry pass to Earth, where they’re presumably assigned to an infant body. (It’s a far more sophisticated explanation of where babies come from than the delivery storks of “Dumbo” — or Pixar’s own “Partly Cloudy” short.)

That’s where Docter’s groundbreaking theory of where people get their personalities factors in: Some components are imprinted at the “You Seminar” (another, more corporate-sounding name for the Great Before), and others are discovered with a little helpful guidance from the older souls. The model isn’t perfect, but there’s a certain brilliance in encouraging kids to identify what excites them in life. One can imagine “Soul” leading to early “eureka” moments in some viewers. Still, the film seems better suited to adult audiences, the way Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” or Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” resonates differently with a little life experience.

Joe wants to get back to the body that (we learn) is still hooked up to life support. But he’s mistaken for a mentor and randomly assigned to a “soul mate,” No. 22 (Tina Fey), a misfit who’s been around for ages and who seems perfectly content never to “get a life.” In fact, 22 prefers it in the Great Before, where countless, more accomplished mentors than Joe — from Abraham Lincoln to Mother Theresa — have tried (and failed) to find her spark. But the overseers — a trio of classic UPA-style line drawings (Alice Braga, Richard Ayoade and Wes Studi), each named Jerry — are easygoing enough to let these two give it a go, and before long, they find a loophole that lands them both on earth.

It’s going to be hard for “Soul” audiences to keep this next twist a secret, but for the sake of the review, let it be a surprise how the pair manifest on earth. Joe’s desperate to get back to that jazz club, while 22 would give anything not to be dragged along on his single-minded — and clearly selfish — mission to make his jazz dreams come true. (She far prefers her comfortable nonexistence to the assault of overwhelming noises and smells of New York City.) But now that she is alive, 22 starts to realize that it’s not as bad as she imagined.

That’s not a message kids need to hear, though there is surely no shortage of adults out there who wish they’d “never been born at all,” and “Soul” has the generous, big-hearted quality of so many Pixar movies before it that makes even a mediocre life seem like something to be appreciated. Docter and co-writers Mike Jones and Kemp Powers (the latter also co-directed) have filled the back half of the film with scenes that uplift and set receptive souls a-tingling.

First, there’s the barbershop, where Joe comes to realize that his obsession with music has interfered with his ability to make meaningful friendships. There’s the face-to-face with tough-love mom Libba (Phylicia Rashad) that puts some of his parental issues in perspective. And there’s the truly magical moment when Joe sits down at his piano and just starts playing, drifting off into what the movie refers to as “The Zone.” As the sage and slightly kooky-sounding British talkshow host Graham Norton puts it, in character as a mystic named Moonwind, “When joy becomes an obsession, one becomes disconnected from life.”

Of all the movie’s gambles — those big risks that might have caused this dazzling house of cards to collapse upon itself — the most unexpected is Pixar vet Docter telling fellow adults that there’s such a thing as being too focused on one’s dreams. Here’s a lesson coming from a studio where artists notoriously sacrifice their private lives to fulfill their passions, where long hours and absolute focus are expected of their employees. And then Docter goes and pushes his luck one step further with a life lesson hardly any family movie dares acknowledge: Sometimes, achieving your dream can leave you feeling emptier than you did before.

Like it or not, that’s a truth worth telling — a sincere, dark-night-of-the-“Soul” revelation —and one that feels far more radical than the long-overdue decision to center this film on a predominantly Black cast. Pixar’s been way behind the diversity curve for far too long: From its inception, the company has been a boys club in which the core team of (bright) white guys have taken turns directing movies about white characters: white toys, white fish, white cars, white ideas. They’ve made room to mentor, but have been slow to diversify their characters and stories onscreen.

And now this. It will be up to audiences of color to decide whether this exceptional film satisfies Pixar’s long void of near total nonrepresentation. “Coco” was a start, though this feels like a breakthrough: a cartoon where the hero could be any race, and his creators opted to project their imaginations beyond the mirror. And though it’s almost impossible to reverse-engineer who did what in a co-directing situation, one has to imagine that some of the film’s cultural perspective owes to co-director Powers (whose play, “One Night in Miami,” also reaches screen this fall). Judging by Mr. Mittens, the movie’s feline sidekick, the crew was light on cat lovers.

In any case, the unsung hero here — the heart of “Soul,” if you will — can be found in the music. From Betty Boop to the Pink Panther, jazz has shaped and inspired the medium of animation (especially in its more avant garde experiments). Pixar rekindles that connection, enlisting Jon Batiste to create the jazz portion of the score — from the fleet-fingered, Keith Jarrett-like improvisations Joe performs to the vibe of city life itself — while Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross delivered the New Agey sound of the before- and after-life.

It all blends together beautifully, a marriage of Pixar’s square, safe, feel-good sensibility with what could be described as the “real world” — and one that, much as “Inside Out” anthropomorphized the mind, will leave audiences young and old imagining their own souls as glowing idiosyncratic cartoon characters. And that’s just what the Docter ordered.

Reviewed online, Los Angeles, Nov. 22, 2020. MPAA Rating: PG. Running time: 100 MIN.

• Production: (Animated) A Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures release of a Disney presentation of a Pixar Animation Studios production. Producer: Dana Murray. Executive producers: Dan Scanlon, Kiri Hart.
• Crew: Director: Pete Docter. Co-director: Kemp Powers. Screenplay, story: Pete Docter, Mike Jones, Kemp Powers. Editor: Kevin Nolting. Music: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross. Jazz compositions and arrangements: Jon Batiste.
• With: Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Graham Norton, Rachel House, Alice Braga, Richard Ayoade, Phylicia Rashad, Donnell Rawlings, Ahmir-Khalib Thompson aka Questlove, Angela Bassett, Cora Champommier, Margo Hall, Daveed Diggs, Rhodessa Jones, Wes Studi.

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‘Soul’ Review: Pixar’s New Feature Gets Musical, and Metaphysical

This inventive tale stars Jamie Foxx as a jazz musician caught in a world that human souls pass through on their way into and out of life.

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By A.O. Scott

In about 100 jaunty, poignant minutes, “ Soul ,” the new Pixar Animation feature, tackles some of the questions that many of us have been losing sleep over since childhood. Why do I exist? What’s the point of being alive? What comes after?

It’s rare for any movie, let alone an all-ages cartoon, to venture into such deep and potentially scary metaphysical territory, but this is hardly the first time that the studio has directed its visual and storytelling resources toward mighty philosophical themes. “Soul” follows “Coco” in conjuring a detailed vision of the afterlife — and also, in this case, the before-life — and joins “Inside Out” in turning abstract concepts into funny characters and vivid landscapes. The world that human souls pass through on our way into and out of life is a glowing, minimalist realm of embodied metaphors and galaxy-brain jokes, populated by blobby, ectoplasmic souls and squiggly bureaucratic “counselors” named Jerry.

But at the same time, “Soul,” directed by Pete Docter and Kemp Powers from a screenplay they wrote with Mike Jones, represents a new chapter in Pixar’s expansion of realism. (Slated to open in theaters earlier this year, it is streaming on Disney+ .) Having conquered fish scales in “Finding Nemo,” beastly fur in “Monsters Inc.,” metal in “Cars” and vermin in “ Ratatouille ,” the animators have set themselves more subtle challenges.

Though other Pixar projects have visited actual places (Paris, San Francisco, the Great Barrier Reef), this is the first to dive fully into the multisensory moods of a living city, chasing after its rhythms, its folkways, its architectural details. “Soul” is a movie about death, about jazz, about longing and limitation. It’s also a New York movie.

As such, it traffics in a brusque urbanist sentimentality that isn’t immune to or afraid of cliché. The sensory riot of the city includes squalling car horns, clattering trains, bagels, slices of pizza, barbershops, subway platforms and the perpetual-motion bustle of pedestrians, strollers, yellow cabs and more. Everything we used to complain about and miss desperately now.

All of this is rendered — “drawn” isn’t the right word; some combination of “sculpted” and “orchestrated” is what’s needed — with graceful, kinetic precision. Like other great New York movies, it invites you to identify particular intersections and storefronts, to compare its imagined geography with the city of your own experience.

It isn’t all noise and crowds. Part of the Pixar aesthetic over the years has been to collapse the distance between animation and other kinds of cinema, and you would swear that the New York scenes in “Soul” were filmed in natural light. There is a beauty that is almost spiritual in the way the sun falls across a block of rowhouses, through the windows of a storefront or along the floorboards of a walk-up apartment. Or maybe not “almost.” The apartment belongs to a pianist named Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx), whose literal struggle to keep body and soul together drives the plot across the city and into the beyond.

Joe, a jazzman like his late father, is at a crossroads. No longer young — though we don’t know exactly how old — he makes a living teaching music to middle-schoolers while chasing after gigs. His mother (Phylicia Rashad) worries about his prospects. A full-time job offer and a chance to sit in with a band led by an A-list saxophonist (Angela Bassett) arrive on the same day, which also turns out to be the last day of Joe’s life.

Sort of. The sheer inventiveness of “Soul” makes it impossible to spoil, but because it’s dedicated to surprise, to the improvisational qualities of existence, I want to tread lightly. Suffice it to say that Joe finds himself suddenly transported from Manhattan to a limbo where he meets a rebellious soul known as 22, who speaks in the voice of Tina Fey.

Not yet assigned to a definite human form, 22 has chosen that voice for its annoying qualities, and she has spent much of eternity driving everyone crazy — except for the Jerrys, who possess infinite patience (and speak in the soothing tones of Wes Studi, Alice Braga and Richard Ayoade). There’s also someone called Terry (Rachel House), the resident bean counter, who is a pricklier character, and as much of a villain as this gentle, melancholy fantasy needs.

Anyway, 22 doesn’t see the point of going down to Earth to take up residence in a body. Joe is desperate to get back into his, and their conflicting, complementary desires send them back to Earth in a switched-identity caper. Each one is the other’s wacky sidekick, and each teaches the other some valuable lessons.

The didacticism of the movie is sincere, not unwelcome, and inseparable from its artistry. Jazz, far from being incidental to “Soul,” is integral to its argument about how beauty is created, sustained and appreciated — and to its grounding of a specifically Black experience in New York.

Joe’s playing is energetic and serene, and it carries him into a zone that is wittily literalized as an area between Earth and the spirit world. (Other visitors to this liminal region include a street-corner mystic named Moonwind, voiced by Graham Norton.) Jon Batiste’ s lovely jazz compositions take turns with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s subtle, cerebral score, building a sonic bridge between the sensual and the abstract, the physical and the metaphysical.

Like other Pixar films, “Soul” is aware of its own paradoxes. The “Toy Story” cycle is a humanist epic about inanimate objects. “Inside Out” is an exuberant fable about the importance of sadness. This is a mightily ambitious warning against taking ambition too seriously. Every soul, the Jerrys explain, has a spark that sends it into the world. Joe and 22 take this to mean that everyone has a unique purpose, a mistake that reflects a competitive, careerist ideology that the movie can’t entirely disown.

But it is nonetheless open to other possibilities, which may be all that any work of art can be. “Soul” tries, within the imperatives of branded commercial entertainment, to carve out an identity for itself as something other than a blockbuster or a technologically revolutionary masterpiece. It’s a small, delicate movie that doesn’t hit every note perfectly, but its combination of skill, feeling and inspiration is summed up in the title.

Soul Rated PG. Mortality. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch on Disney+.

A.O. Scott is a critic at large and the co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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Soul doctor: theater review.

This new Broadway musical tells the real-life story of Shlomo Carlebach, the "Rock Star Rabbi."

By THR Staff

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Long before Matisyahu , there was Shlomo Carlebach . This Orthodox Jewish performer, whose catchy moniker was the “Rock Star Rabbi,” delivered an accessible brand of Jewish music that made him an unlikely pop star in the 1960s. He’s the subject of the ambitious new musical Soul Doctor , now premiering on Broadway after earlier regional and off-Broadway runs. But while one can never underestimate the commercial appeal of shows geared to Jewish audiences, the transfer may have been ill-advised.

Bookended by scenes set in Vienna in 1938, when Carlebach ( Eric Anderson ) witnessed the early horrors of the Holocaust, and 1988, when he returned for the first time to perform an emotionally charged concert, the show depicts his event-filled life. That includes his unlikely friendship with the black singer Nina Simone ( Amber Iman ), the “High Priestess of Soul,” and a period in the 1960s in which he established himself as a counter-culture figure in hippie-era Haight-Ashbury.

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Director/book writer Daniel S. Wise attempts to cram far too much into the proceedings, which feel much longer than two-and-a-half hours. The choppily episodic storyline is enlivened by some three dozen songs written by Carlebach, mostly featuring new English-language lyrics by David Schlechter . Although simple in structure, they’re undeniably infectious, and their joyous energy does much to fuel the evening.  

The show’s considerable flaws are more glaringly apparent in this Broadway production performed at the Circle in the Square, newly reconfigured with a proscenium stage. The book scenes feature frequently groan-inducing dialogue and bad jokes, and the choreography by Benoit-Swan Pouffer , formerly the artistic director of Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, contains numerous cliches.

STORY: Dule Hill Joins Broadway’s ‘After Midnight’ Cast

While the scenes depicting Carlebach’s interactions with the flower-power hippies border on a parody of Hair , the production does succeed in its quieter moments, especially a beautifully written and performed scene depicting his first meeting with Simone at a smoky jazz club where she’s performing such songs as “I Put a Spell on You.” Their burgeoning friendship, and the intense bond they discover in their shared love of music, gives the show a true emotional center. Too bad, then, that it isn’t developed more fully.   

Anderson delivers a terrific performance in the central role, beautifully suggesting Carlebach’s gentle, shambling appeal as well as the low-key charisma that made him an unlikely recording star whose output consisted of some 25 albums. He delivers the songs in assured fashion, and is particularly moving in depicting the performer’s struggle to reconcile his progressive brand of Judaism with the traditional beliefs with which he was raised.

Making her Broadway debut, Iman is equally superb as Simone, powerfully conveying the singer’s fierce dignity and saucy humor as well as delivering strong versions of such signature songs as “Sinnerman.” Among the large supporting cast, Zarah Mahler is quietly moving as a woman who falls in love with Shlomo, and Ron Orbach scores in several roles ranging from a stern cantor to a hip music producer.

Venue: Circle in the Square, New York City

Cast: Eric Anderson, Amber Iman, Ron Orbach, Jamie Jackson, Jacqueline Antaramian, Michael Paternostro, Ryan Strand, Ethan Khusidman, Teddy Walsh, Jamie Jackson, Zarah Mahler

Direction/book: Daniel S. Wise

Music and additional lyrics: Shlomo Carlebach

Lyrics: David Schechter

Choreographer: Benoit-Swan Pouffer

Set designer: Neil Patel

Costume designer: Maggie Morgan

Lighting designer: Jeff Croiter

Sound designers: John Shivers, David Patridge

Presented by Jeremy Chess, Jerome Levy, Robert Beckwitt, Edward Steinberg, Joel Kahn, Danny Boy Productions

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Soul Doctor Reviews

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Take this exhilarating musical journey through the triumphs and challenges of a Rock-Star-Rabbi. The untold story of Shlomo Carlebach and Nina Simone galvanized a musical and spiritual revival for a new generation. He fled Hitler's Reich. She fled Jim Crow's South. Their music woke up the world!

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Soul Doctor

Take this exhilarating musical journey through the triumphs and challenges of a Rock-Star-Rabbi. The untold story of Shlomo Carlebach and Nina Simone galvanized a musical and spiritual revival for a new generation. He fled Hitler’s Reich. She fled Jim Crow’s South. Their music woke up the world!

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June 13, 2023,

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Soul Reviews

There are speeches within this film that I will take away for the rest of my life, that is how impactful this film is.

Full Review | Mar 1, 2024

While it's true that some themes such as "the meaning of life" could be inaccessible to younger viewers, Soul is also understood and works on a more basic level. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 16, 2024

Some luminous musical numbers, the protagonist's transformation, and the visualization of concepts such as lost souls, or “no-body” lift a movie that finds its driving force in the reiteration of ideas... [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Feb 16, 2024

Probably one of the more overlooked Pixar gems released, and it deserves so much more celebration and appreciation.

Full Review | Jan 12, 2024

Soul feels like a midlife crisis movie that has adults questioning their lives and children distracted by the bright colors.

Full Review | Aug 22, 2023

If anything, Soul is guilty of over-ambition. The wizardry and wit are there, but it lacks Pixar’s usual deftness in making complex themes sing for youngsters.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 25, 2023

A classic Pixar feature, with the trademark emotionally powerful third act; a heartwarming, sweet, tear-inducing score; and a relatable, profound, well-explored story about our own soul and the meaning of life.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Jul 24, 2023

I wouldn’t consider Soul a unanimous success, but its potential is undeniable. The impact and possibility this movie projects for future films at Pixar is key.

Full Review | Jul 21, 2023

Is it among the very best Pixar has to offer? No. Did it make me think and feel deeply the way that a Pixar film often does? Absolutely.

Full Review | May 2, 2023

...it should help convince them that even if it’s not something they are great at, all they have to have is passion for its pursuit and that will be more than enough to satisfy their soul’s enrichment.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 26, 2022

An existential comedy that delivers beyond generic religious, psychological, life goals and ideals... [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Oct 18, 2022

Soul is a thoughtful animated family film with a tender nature, some sweet laughs, and an even kinder heart.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 9, 2022

Soul may not match the top-tier titles in Pixar’s formidable filmography, but this emotive exploration of human existence is just as engrossing all the same.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 1, 2022

Pete Docter’s gratifyingly inventive Soul is anchored in a similar site of broken chances and eluding hope, making it one of the most defining films of this year.

Full Review | Aug 26, 2022

“Soul” is a heartfelt story about second chances and finding real purpose in your life. It’s about obsessions, mortality, and finding the true qualities that make each of us tick.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 25, 2022

While there’s plenty of zany action, including talking animals and a body swap, Soul is one of Pixar’s quietest, most contemplative, and gentle films. And for anyone who has questioned why you’re here, this will pack an emotional punch.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | May 20, 2022

The film teeters on that fine line between genius and curiosity, going in directions that are unexpected even for a studio like Pixar. The film is confirmation that Pixar are still a company that do things their way, and that can only be a good thing.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 28, 2022

Beyond its sillier humorous notes and efficient, fast-paced explanations of complex worlds, Soul rewards contemplation.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 17, 2022

Soul is not just another masterpiece in the Pixar collection, but it is also the studios most thought-provoking and one of their most innovative features theyve made.

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10 | Feb 16, 2022

The film looks exceptional, the music sounds amazing, yet even with all the technical bells and whistles, Soul never forgets the emotional core and experience of its characters. It's a film that tells a story at a sensory level.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Feb 14, 2022

Doctor of Movies

Review – soul (2020).

Director: Pete Docter

Starring: Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Graham Norton, Rachel House, Alice Braga, Phylicia Rashad, Donnell Rawlings, Angela Bassett

In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock shocked audiences and turned narrative cinema on its head when he killed off his protagonist Marion Crane only a third of the way through Psycho . He could hardly have imagined that sixty years down the track he would be one-upped by a kids movie that manages to kill its protagonist before the opening title card. Of course, Pixar has made a habit of challenging our expectations of kids films, but perhaps more than ever before, to call Soul a kids movie at all is some combination of reductive and misleading. 

Talented pianist Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx) makes ends meet with part-time work as a high school band teacher but his real dream is to play jazz. On the verge of resigning himself to his fate and accepting a full time role at the school, Joe is presented with the opportunity of a lifetime to play with Dorothea Williams’ (Angela Bassett) jazz quartet. But before his dream can be realised, Joe up and dies. However,our protagonist’s death is just the beginning of a creative exploration of life, purpose, passion, determinism, nihilism. You know, standard kids’ stuff. In a desperate attempt to get back to his life, Joe jumps off the conveyer belt ushering him towards the Great Beyond, and lands in the Great Before, where pre-born souls are given their personalities and passions in preparation for life. Mistaken for one of their mentors, Joe is paired up with Soul 22 (Tina Fey), a thorn in their side who has no desire to be born. The two strike up a deal: Joe will help 22 get her Earth card and then she’ll let him use it to get back to his body so she can stay in the Great Before.

When Pixar films are at their best, it is like the child and parent sitting next to each other are experiencing two entirely different films on the same screen. Up , Wall-E and Inside Out are beloved by children and adults alike but for completely different reasons. Soul attempts this double communication too. For the adults, there is an existential reflection on purpose and passion, and their importance to ones sense of self, of striving, obsession, and how we ultimately find fulfilment. For the kids there is a bright and colourful adventure which adheres pretty closely to the Pixar odd-couple-on-a-quest mould with an added body-swap element. However, rather than being both things simultaneously, it somewhat uncomfortably flip-flops between them, struggling to find a balance. This discomfort comes from the fact that it seems significantly more interested in the grown-ups’ story than the it does in the children’s. While executed in a brilliantly imaginative way, there is no escaping the fact that a child in the audience has to sit through a good 30-45mins of a middle aged man dealing with his mortality before they get to the silly, body-swapping adventure, passages which feel significantly less inspired and more conventional. It almost feels like Pete Docter (director) and Kemp Powers (co-director) wanted to make a film for grown ups but felt an obligation to throw a bone to Pixar’s traditional audience. It is difficult to imagine Soul being among any kid’s favourite Pixar movies, and the fact that Disney so willingly placed iton Disney+ without any attempt at a theatrical or premium VOD release suggests they didn’t consider it to be a likely cash cow. That said, the film that is targeted at a more mature audience is among the best work that Pixar has done. 

Splitting time between Earth and the after(or before)life, the duality of the narrative gives Docter the opportunity to show off Pixar’s range as an animation house, from the incredible photo-realism of the New York scenes to the more impressionistic Great Before. The character design is equally diverse, from the human Joe, to the translucent, iridescent blue blobs of the souls, to the Picasso-like line drawings that staff the Great Before. The creation of these two distinct spaces is aided by the film having dual scores, with Jon Batiste providing the scenes from Joe’s New York life with a jazz score that feels culturally and geographically authentic, while Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross bring a more ethereal quality to the Great Before. Where Soul is at its most striking, however, is when it takes us between these spaces. As Joe sits at his piano we watch the world fade away and through light and colour it visualises that transcendent experience of being ‘in the zone,’ of being so swept up in that thing you love doing that time and space seem to leave you behind. 

There has been a lot made of Soul ’s adherence to a supposed animation trope that see’s black protagonists transformed into animals. That this is discussed as a trope says more about the general dearth of animated films featuring black protagonists than the abundance of examples of this particular narrative device. While there is a body swap element to Soul , it is, importantly, not used as a mechanism to separate Joe from his blackness or his culture. Rather, it allows Joe to observe his life from a distance. While Pixar films have been a lot of things, racially diverse is not one of them. Coco was a breakthrough for the studio on that front, but Soul is equally significant. Where Coco concerned a culturally specific narrative about the Day of the Dead, Soul ’s core narrative could be about anyone but it is placed in culturally specific setting and as such becomes an exploration of a black life.

Soul is an uneven film, but at its best it absolutely soars. While its relative lack of appeal to children make it unlikely to take its place in the pantheon of truly beloved Pixar films, it does make you wonder whether the studio would ever be willing to make a film that was unashamedly targeted at a more mature audience. While Western screen culture has been wed to the understanding of animation as being first and foremost for children in a way that Asia definitely has not, that is starting to change and you wonder if Pixar’s remit might expand to embrace that. 

Rating: ★★★★

Review by Duncan McLean

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