Review of Bolt (2008) by Chads. — 23 Nov 2008

Why all the deception? Why not use an animal trainer? In this world, televsion producers don't believe in dogs doing method. So they pull a "Truman Show" on him. For the show to work, Bolt(John Travolta) is tricked repeatedly into thinking that Penny(Miley Cyrus) needs saving.

The dog never leaves the studio. Since Bolt looks older than his previous incarnation as a puppy in the opening scene, there's the suggestion that Penny and Bolt bonded at the studio facilities before the show went into production.

But what did Penny teach him? Apparently, very little; a cat teaches Bolt how to be a dog. Before he meets Mitttens(Susie Essman), the "superpowers" Bolt possesses can be characterized as the abilities of an idiot savant, because this is one maladjusted dog.

Shooting laser beams out of his eyes comes more naturally to him than sniffing another dog's butt. During his puppy stage, Penny seems to have played a big part in making an emotional cripple out of Bolt.

Before her feelings for him blossomed into something genuine, their relationship was based on a premise of fakery. At some point, Penny permitted herself to love the dog. The photographs she hangs up in their dressing room is a timeline, and somewhere on that timeline, Bolt stopped being more than her co-star.

The photographs are a smart allusion to the "relationship" between Jim Carrey and Laura Linney, in which photographic evidence is collected as proof of a bonafide relationship. The cracks in Penny's conscience begin to show, well before Bolt disappears, but full-blown remorse towards her complicitness over subordinating the dog's welfare for the good of the show and her burgeoning career, surfaces when she has to act with a replacement.

Mittens is half-right when she points to Penny's image on a billboard, as the cat makes her case for the duplicity of human beings. Penny comes around, but not before she commits animal cruelty.