SOUL

 This year's sure-fire Oscar winner for Best Animated Feature and probably Best Original Score, "Soul" is a brilliant mess of a movie more likely to appeal to adults than to children who almost certainly won't 'get' it, (and they certainly won't get the references to "A Matter of Life and Death" unless they have sophisticated cineaste parents). In some ways it's both old-fashioned and ground-breaking, at least in its attempt to push the boundaries of children's animation while never reaching the sublime heights of say "The Incredibles" or "Inside Out". The animation may be extraordinary but we've been here before.

The title, of course, has more than one meaning. Soul might refer to what a good jazz musician puts into his music but more fundamentally here it also refers to what we are all said to carry within us. Quite early in the film our hero finds himself on a 'Stairway to Heaven' to give that Powell and Pressburger film its other title and from here on it alternates between the avant-garde and that old-fashioned Pixar formula right down to a talking cat, (big mistake). A brilliant voice cast, (Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Angela Bassett, Daveed Diggs and a surprisingly cast Graham Norton of all people), do what they can with the material but the script is uninspired and it is noticeably lacking in gags, (I think kids will get bored quite quickly). Not one of the greats, then and maybe not even the best animation of the current year.