Cold Souls 020210

Paul Giamatti stars as Paul Giamatti but he’s the only person playing himself. His wife isn’t played by, or even have the same name as, his wife. Anyway, Paul is in a play, some Russian thing about an uncle, and because of his involvement with the character and the standard dreariness of all things Russian due to the fact that it’s possible for them to reach their fifth birthday before seeing the sun, his soul is heavy. Enter a company that specializes in removing people’s souls. Paul tries this but, because of his new lack of emotion, his performance suffers. Rather than have to bear the weight of his own soul, he rents the soul of a Russian poet. His performance is now spot on but he’s just not himself. He then decides to get his soul back only to find that it’s been stolen by a Russian soul dealer because his wife wanted the soul of an American actor so she’d be better in her role in a Russian soap opera. Paul then travels to Russia with the female soul mule, who stole his soul in the first place, to get it back.

This whole thing is a cleverly unique concept. The world is completely believable, and made more real by all the characters’ complete disregard for how strange all of this is. Upon discovering the company exists Paul never laughs at the concept, he never asks David Strathairn, the company head, how this could be possible and instead treats the whole thing almost like a plastic surgery inquiry. Paul’s wife, the incredibly underrated Emily Watson (not Emma), doesn’t respond to the situation with disbelief or “You expect me to believe that?” instead she wonders why he would do that.

The movie’s weaknesses are by no means in the setting but instead in the execution of the idea and setting. The entire concept is a completely ridiculous farce, but however the movie is what I like to call modern comedies or barely comedies. Movies like Adventureland, Observe and Report, and Taking Woodstock. Movies that are comedies because they have one humorous line too many to be a drama (though I laughed harder at the Fugitive than any of those movies), the idea only works as a comedy, or the producers just decided to classify it as a comedy because. This movie’s entire set up is a comedy, the story is a comedy, the setting is a comedy, but it’s played as a drama. Sometimes that can work for a comedy but in this movie it doesn’t. To make things worse it really doesn’t work as a drama either. This could be a very creative way to explore the nature of the soul but it doesn’t even raise questions or discussion. Every time a question is raised about the soul, the immediate response is “we don’t know.” I would rather be told something I disagree with because then I at least think about why I disagree.

This movie gets a generous D+. It didn’t suck outright but it’s a great example of sub mediocrity. After finishing it you won’t count it as time stolen from your life because you won’t actually remember it going by and in your life scheduling you’ll lump it in with time spent sleeping.