Joe (Jamie Foxx) has been a struggling gig musician for years. He finally gets a once-in-a-lifetime shot at playing jazz with the Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett) Quartet but falls into an open manhole and dies. Obviously, Joe isn't about to take death lying down. He breaks from the Great Beyond into the Great Before, a kind of holding area where new souls are imprinted with personalities, and passes himself off as a mentor to Soul 22 (Tina Fey), who has determined that she never wants to be born. She's more than happy to give Joe her pass to Earth but first they must do what no mentor has been able to do for her, find her Spark. A handy loophole sees both Joe and 22 hurtling to Earth, but accidentally in the wrong bodies: 22 in Joe's and Joe in the unfortunately proximate Mr. Mittens, a therapy cat. Joe has to convince 22 that life is worth the experience and also find a way to get back into his body before his chance to play passes him by.
This is so much better than Onward, it's a little sad. And I like Dungeons & Dragons way more than I like jazz! It just wasn't the type of deep, meditative animated film about the human condition we've come to expect from Pixar. And maybe that's a problem but that's a discussion for another day.
My only concern about this is that Mr. Mittens is a calico cat and calicos are always female. That's it. That's my one complaint. Soul is currently streaming on Disney+ and you should watch it.
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