Cold Souls is a movie that tries hard to be different and edgy... several movies like Being John Malkovich, Stranger than Fiction etc. come to mind. The movie is categorized as a comedy but in that department it falls flat with me. The movie basically revolves around Actor Paul Giamatti playing himself as a depressed man in a crisis. At first his character is really interesting but like the core idea it wears off really quick and at some point in the movie I got annoyed of watching his expressionless face. The concept of getting rid of your soul or buying others souls for different experience is interesting but didn't grip me. At first there is some humorous element when Giamatti is introduced to the concept of soul-extraction. But jokes like the soul looking like a chickpea or a Jellybean and Giamatti dropping it and searching for it like for a dropped contact lens left me with the feeling that this is supposed to be comedic but doesn't work at all. I was especially put off by the odd pacing of the movie introducing characters that I barely cared of, especially all those scenes in Russian without subtitles were annoying. There are some interesting visual shots in this movie but it all feels jammed in for artsy interest, so up until the sudden ending (although the movie felt endless) even those parts didn't work for me. All in all a big disappointment, although I liked Paul Giamattis work and will check out some of his other movies for sure.
Review of Cold Souls
