Joe Gardner is a middle school teacher with a love for jazz music. After a successful audition at the Half Note Club, he suddenly gets into an accident that separates his soul from his body and is transported to the You Seminar, a center in which souls develop and gain passions before being transported to a newborn child. Joe must enlist help from the other souls-in-training, like 22, a soul who has spent eons in the You Seminar, in order to get back to Earth.
Score
Jon Batiste's jazz + Reznor/Ross's cosmic ambient = sonic perfection
Acting
Jamie Foxx makes Joe's desperation feel devastatingly real
Direction
Docter's most mature, least sentimental film — finally
Director
Pete Docter
Jamie Foxx
Joe Gardner (voice)
Tina Fey
22 (voice)
Graham Norton
Moonwind (voice)
Rachel House
Terry (voice)
Alice Braga
Counselor Jerry (voice)
Richard Ayoade
Counselor Jerry (voice)
Phylicia Rashād
Libba Gardner (voice)
Donnell Rawlings
Dez (voice)
Questlove
Curly (voice)
Angela Bassett
Dorothea (voice)
Cora Champommier
Connie (voice)
Margo Hall
Melba (voice)
Daveed Diggs
Paul (voice)
Wes Studi
Counselor Jerry (voice)
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
First Pixar film with a Black lead — and they spent years consulting Black musicians to get the jazz scenes authentic, down to how Joe's fingers move on piano keys.
The 'lost souls' aren't failed artists — they're obsessed ones. The film quietly argues that passion becomes prison when it replaces living.
US
