Soul (2020)

Finally, I can say once again that I've seen all the Academy Best Animated Features! Back when it was advertised, this flick didn't tempt me as much as Onward, but I learned long ago that ads are a poor gauge for Pixar quality.

When New York middle school band teacher Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx) has a fatal yet family-friendly accident, he's not ready to see what lies in store for him in "the Great Beyond." After all, his life just got a whole lot more promising when jazz sax diva Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett) invited him to accompany her on piano. His only hope for getting his blobby blue soul back to his still operable body involves serving as a mentor to a not-yet-born soul in "the Great Before." The soul assigned to him (Tina Fey) is designated "22," and her low number hints at how long she's been failing to find the motivation to get born. Joe does find a workaround of sorts, but things go sideways: 22 inhabits his body, and his soul...well, you've likely seen the cat in posters....

To clarify, the unborn souls do not have the minds of newborns. Many act moderately babyish, but those who have spent no shortage of time in the Great Before have plenty of knowledge. Maturity is another question. 22 is widely regarded as a problem child, despite having a middle-aged woman's voice. Granted, she chooses that voice to be obnoxious. Might I say, I hardly think of her as having a gender.

Anyway, 22's issues can be summed up as (1) not dealing well with abstract conceptions and (2) not having had the right kind of mentor. Learning about food in an ethereal seminar won't expose her to the sense of taste, for instance, and a celebrity may not be as inspiring as a schmo desperate to resume even a mundane life. Her early clumsiness with Joe's body is embarrassing for both of them, especially amid a hustling metropolis, and is a large source of the movie's humor, but once she starts getting used to it, she takes pleasure in the slightest experiences. This may threaten Joe's chances of switching over in time for the gig.

Joe's felinity also gets played for laughs a lot -- more so than for cuteness, I'd say. We never get an explanation for why only 22 can hear Joe's cat noises as words, but I took it in stride, the same way I could accept that other people hear Joe's voice when we still hear 22's.

Plotwise, it's almost a (heh) spiritual successor to Coco, with a touch of Up, which also had Pete Docter at the helm. Once again, a guy walking among departed spirits, who are inconsistent about feeling pain, wants to return and play music, which his mother doesn't approve. OK, Joe's mom (Phylicia Rashad) isn't against his love of music, just his pursuit of an unstable career. Considering how old they are, that's a long time not to reach an understanding.

In terms of creativity, it's more like Docter's Inside Out, albeit with fewer candy colors and less screentime in the fantasy realm to flesh things out. Some of the premises intrigue me, and some I learned not to think too hard about. The authority figures are peculiar in both nature and visual style, for better or worse. I appreciate that we hear a variety of accents and occasionally other languages, acknowledging that America isn't the whole world. As often happens with modern Disney, there are no villains, but Terry (Rachel House), an accountant who demands that Joe maintain balance by staying dead, comes close. Then there are the lost souls, who are creepy and potentially dangerous but as pitiable as they sound.

Pixar sure likes to get philosophical for family fare. In this case, the explicit moral lesson works for me, but I'm not sure I like these ideas about souls. I remain unconvinced that so much about a personality could be set before birth, especially given how much the bodies affect the behavior of both Joe and 22. And if Joe is merely comatose, shouldn't his soul still be on Earth? Hmm, for that matter, if he's so close to death, why doesn't his next of kin know about it even hours later? The setting is modern, so there's no excuse of slow connections.

You might expect my "racial" tag on this review, given that most of the living human characters are Black. There's even a barbershop scene. But like in The Princess and the Frog and unlike in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, race has no major bearing on the plot or dialog. It just befits the theme of jazz, which in turn provides a metaphor for glorious improvisation in different ways. And yes, the music we hear is pretty soothing, class practice notwithstanding.

Soul doesn't have the emotional impact on me that some Pixar pics have, but I provisionally agree with its Oscar win, at least until I see Wolfwalkers. It is my favorite jazz-focused movie this side of Green Book, tho honestly, the rest are far behind for me.