Dotty & Soul

Dotty & Soul is an 2022 American comedy film written and directed by Adam Saunders in his directorial debut. The Paramount+ with Showtime film stars Leslie Uggams, Saunders, David Koechner and Gary Owen. The film follows Ethan Cox (Saunders), the owner of a self-driving car company, who finds himself cancelled when his controversial Halloween costume grabs the attention of the public on social media and puts his career at risk. To mitigate the damage, he hires Dotty (Uggams), a 71-year-old snack cart vendor, as the company's new CEO.

The film premiered at the 2022 San Diego International Film Festival in October 2022. It was released on May 19, 2023, by Quiver Distribution.

Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 40% of 5 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.1/10.

Brittany Witherspoon from the Screen Rant gave the film a positive review, writing "The story and characters progress naturally, and the good film comes down to its execution by the cast and crew...To the surprise of no one, Deadpool’s Leslie Uggams is tremendous as Dotty and delivers a show stopping performance...Saunders feature length directorial debut is a confident one.”

Film critic Avi Offer from the NYC Movie Guru in a mixed review, writes: "Dotty & Soul has two things going for it... First, there's Leslie Uggams' charismatic performance. The film comes alive the most whenever she's on screen. She deserves better material, though. "