Movie summary of Cold Souls by Michael the Moviegoer.
COLD SOULS = ***
“Being Paul Giamatti”
Paul Giamatti plays a version of himself in the clever, darkly hilarious sci-fi comedy “Cold Souls” from director Sophie Barthes. (But I use only the loosest definition of sci-fi, much like Woody Allen’s “Sleeper” decades ago.)
During rehearsals for Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya”, the Oscar-nominated Giamatti feels the full weight of his soul dragging him down. After discovering an article about “soul storage” in a magazine, he quickly sets out to have his soul extracted and stored until after the play opens.
But all does not go as planned. His soul (the size of a chickpea) is stolen from the warehouse and taken to Russia where there is a black market in soul trafficking. A Russian soap opera actress hoping to purchase the soul of a major actor like Al Pacino, gets Giamatti’s soul downloaded into her body. But when Giamatti discovers that soullessness equals bad acting, he needs to travel to Russia to try and get his soul back.
“Cold Souls” is an odd mixture of “The Twilight Zone” and a Saturday Night Live skit. Trying to stretch it out to feature length causes some of the middle sections to sag a bit, but overall I thoroughly enjoyed this intriguing bit of craziness.
DVD Double-Feature: Making a movie about a real-life oddball character actor playing himself in a fictional oddball scenario does have a precedent. Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman did it in 1999’s “Being John Malkovich”. John Cusack discovers a door that is a portal into the brain of John Malkovich. Cusack can enter and become Malkovich. Sounds twisted, but it really works.
Michael The Moviegoer
