Disney loves making animated movies that really get us thinking: life, death, humanity. Are these movies for kids or adults? The answer is both, and in the new film “Soul,” Jamie Foxx and Tina Fey are doing some serious soul searching.
What really is a soul? And what does it mean to have one?
Jamie Foxx (as Joe Gardner): “No smell, no taste.”
Tina Fey (as 22): “Or touch. See?” *slap slap*
Disney and Pixar are taking on some big topics in their latest animated feature, “Soul.”
Jamie Foxx (as Joe Gardner): “This is heaven?”
Counselor Jerry: “No, it’s the Great Before. This is where new souls go to get their personalities, quirks and interests before they go to Earth.”
Oh, OK! We’re going there!
Tina Fey (as 22): “Is all this living really worth dying for?”
Jamie Foxx and Tina Fey star in an introspective story about Joe Gardener, a middle school band teacher who finally books his first gig playing jazz on the stage.
Jamie Foxx: “He runs out the door like everything is great, and as soon as he runs out the door, he falls into a manhole, and his whole life and afterlife changes.”
Uh-oh! Which leads him to another realm, the Great Before, where he meets 22, a soul played by Tina Fey, who ain’t about that Earth life.
Tina Fey: “She is very suspect of it. She thinks it sounds scary, painful, difficult, depressing, smelly. She is, like, Joe’s chance. If he can convince her to go back, then maybe he can go back also.”
Angela Bassett tells us this is a love letter to music lovers.
Angela Bassett: “I am a female lead of a jazz quartet, and I am about that, seriously.”
With serious standards for Joe.
Angela Bassett: “You better have a suit, you better be on time, and you better take the audience there.”
Which Jamie knows how to do. I mean, he is an accomplished musician himself, and now the first Black actor to front a Pixar film.
Pete Docter (behind the scenes): “Stop, I have something to tell you!”
Jamie Foxx (behind the scenes): “Twenty-two, stop, I have something to tell you! No, 22!”
: “You’re gonna talk and talk and talk. and then you, and I guess you call it the animated sweet spot, when you say it the right way, when and it sounds like, ‘Oh, yeah. that’s animation.'”
And, who knows. You may just walk away with a new perspective on things.
Tina Fey: “There’s just being present and in the world and making connections and having feelings. There’s more to life than checking boxes of things that you’ve wanted to achieve.”
Disney-Pixar’s “Soul” begins streaming on Disney Plus Christmas Day
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