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Sometimes I think that I should take it easy on this type of movie, since it’s the type that people say is “ambitious” or “going for something.”  But instead I’m starting to think that I should be especially hard on a comedy about souls that fails to say something of its own about the soul, to criticize people who try, or at least to be consistently funny.  Even if an audience member were totally unaware that he was attending a movie about souls, opening the movie with a quote from Descartes confirms that this is indeed a highly intellectual production.  It’s a story about a distraught, middle-aged intellectual actor who (Paul Giamatti, playing himself for no good reason that I’m aware of), through a creative conceit of the movie, involves himself with a company that allows him to trade his soul for that of a Russian poet so as to better play Uncle Vanya (Descartes isn’t enough—we need Chekhov too).    No matter whose soul he has, Giamatti takes long walks alone on the Coney Island boardwalk with red bleary eyes.  Don’t be deceived by the intellectual trappings-this movie is severely lacking in character, imagery, and plot, with the exception of a few fun moments, is nearly worthless.

Paul Giamatti has a wife (Emily Watson), but all we know about her is that she shares a bed with him and is at least somewhat concerned with his well-being.  Watson’s talents are completely wasted—the material written for her throughout this entire screenplay doesn’t allow her to do a fraction of what she was given in her small role in Synecdoche, New York.  Nina (Dina Korzun) is called a “mule” because her job is to serve as a host for souls and smuggle them from Russia to the U.S.  For a woman who has experienced so many souls, she has a shocking lack of insight into the human condition, and the most interesting thing she does is put little stickers on her fingers so that she can get past a bioscan at customs.  Dr. Flintstein (David Strathairn) runs the soul-swapping business and gets in a few good lines, but he doesn’t leave much of an impression in your mind when he’s not in a scene or after the movie is over.  Oleg (Boris Kievsky) is the leader of the Russian smuggling business, and his wife Sveta (Katheryn Winnick) is a star in Russian soaps.  Both behave exactly as you’d expect them to.

Especially given the ample creative opportunities granted by a script that deals with souls, the movie’s visuals fail to hold the viewer’s interest.  When she wants to get emotion out of the camera, director Sophie Barthes rapidly brings it out of focus and then back into focus.  Getting your soul sucked out looks an awful lot like getting an MRI.  When we do get a brief glimpse at Giamatti’s inner soul, all we get are some images of mother and child and strange, powdered white creepy-looking people.  I had no emotional or intellectual response to these images to speak of.  If you did, please comment and tell me what I was missing.

The plot is as follows: Giamatti’s soul is stolen and taken to Russia, and then he goes to Russia and retrieves it.  That’s all there is to it.  While movies can certainly succeed without intricate plots, this one drags horribly.  Still, this movie had its moments.

A fine short could have been made out of Giamatti’s first scene with Dr. Flintstein and his performance of Vanya while soulless.  Gags and one-liners give these scenes a zaniness that the rest of the movie lacks.  Jokes include a soul that looks like a chickpea, two lovers who are excited that their souls will be stored together, fear of a soul being sent to New Jersey for storage, and the ridiculous contrasts between performances of Vanya with and without various souls.  While I think you’d enjoy watching this short if it is ever made, this handful of scenes cannot hold up the rest.

-Robert Henderson