Cold Souls

A new review from Movie Man Mike

Cold Souls. (B-). I wonder if my expectations for this film were too high. I like Paul Giamatti. The trailers for this film made it out to be a comedy. After seeing it, I agree that it is a comedy, but it’s more of a dry comedy and it’s also a drama. Ultimately, it was one of those movies where I wanted to laugh, but I seldom did or could. Paul Giamatti plays himself in the film. He’s acting in a Broadway play and he’s having trouble getting his character right because he’s all stressed out by his life. What does he do? He has his soul removed. Sounds like a good premise, but once he had his soul removed, he wasn’t really all that funny. It was only after he was implanted with the soul of another person that he became more animated and more funny, but then it got serious too—because this is a person’s soul we’re talking about after all. Then his original soul gets sold on the black market and he has to go in search of it to get it back. And in getting his soul back, he discovers that things really weren’t so bad to begin with. If you just have to see this, I say wait until it comes out on DVD.