Movie Review: “Bolt”
“Bolt”
Rating: 64
Disney’s “Bolt” is the studio’s best non-Pixar computer-generated cartoon to date, a shaggy-dog tale that owes as much to “The Truman Show” as it does to “Lassie Come Home.” Young kids might not get the film’s meta layers, but characters are funny and cuddly enough that they just might not care.
As it opens, Bolt (voiced by John Travolta) is a puppy getting picked out of a pet shop by Penny (Miley Cyrus), and then it skips forward five years. At this point, Bolt is a superhero dog with heat vision, a nuclear bark and the strength to drop cars from high bridges, saving Penny from peril at every turn.
But none of it is real: Bolt and Penny are the stars of a slam-bang TV action series, but Bolt is blissfully unaware that life is a stage. A few clever accidents later, Bolt learns that the real world is less easy to conquer as he travels cross-country with smart-mouthed alley cat Mittens (Susie Essman of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” who fans of that great show will swear is going to break into rancid profanity at any time, but keeps it clean nevertheless) and a star-struck hamster in a Wayne Coyne-style plastic ball.
While Disney’s previous CG outings without the Pixar crew could never hold their own with the company’s prestige line, “Bolt” comes close — the animation is sharp and the film is packed with expressive characters. The Hollywood in-jokes about agents and screenwriter pitches and the first 15-minutes of explosive action get tiresome, but once “Bolt” gets into the “real” world and the banter between Travolta, Essman and Mark Walton as the hamster hits its stride, there is good fun to be had.
For added excitement, see “Bolt” at a theater equipped with 3D capability — the effect is great, with Bolt and Mittens jumping off the screen, and the hamster rolling around in the next aisle. The technology has caught up with filmmakers’ ambitions, and the glasses are headache-free.
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thanks for the good review. Bolt is one of my favorite movies. I saw it a week ago on dvd with my kids.
Pixar makes good movies