Review of Bolt (2008) by Adam G — 29 Nov 2011

"Bolt" will naturally be competing for the #1 spot next weekend with teenybopper favorite, "Twilight" and rightfully so. It's had a solid marketing campaign, and it has the same wide appeal as other films like Madagascar 2, just without the sequel pull. The trailer and the concept are fairly clever and show much of what is to like about the film, but it's the execution that truly matters.

The direction is fairly typical for this sort of film, but still quite solid. It has a fair amount of laugh out loud moments, most involving quirky characters like the adventurous hamster, Rhino, and the two cat actors also are quite funny near the beginning of the film. The first twenty minutes have an "Incredibles" like edge that is lacking through the rest of the film. This is of course because during the first twenty minutes we are inside the TV show, which is what Bolt thinks is real, but it is not truly reality. The parody of hollywood is quite funny and I'd say the films best moments lie in its first 30 minutes or so. The direction isn't really the issue there though as it stays pretty solid throughout the film. It's only corny when it seems fairly necessary in a family film like this, and it tries fairly hard to appeal to not only 5 year olds on a sugar high like other more amateur CG family films have been done lately. I think this shows Disney Animation Studios potential as its own separate entity, totally apart from the brilliant minds at Pixar who seem to put out the absolute best family films every year. If the Disney team keeps this up Buena Vista should have at least a couple animated films a year that will both satisfy a large audience.

The acting is probably one of the film's major strong points. While Travolta is as straightforward as you'd expect as the loyal dog and TV star Bolt, the supporting cast is where the acting really shines though. I'm not talking about Miley Cyrus who gives a passable, but an expectedly needy and fairly personalityless portrayal as the teen actress who stars in the TV show along side her faithful dog Bolt. I'm talking about the other people. All the voice actors who played the pigeons, which were really a very funny running theme, despite the fact that it was all kind of cliche. They were pretty hysterical, particularly in New York and LA. Penny's (Miley Cyrus) agent is also played expertly by Greg Germann who gives a fairly stereotypical, but a satirical performance. He's basically the cleaned up Ari Gold, with a little extra 1950's optimism thrown into the mix. The hamster, played by Mark Walton is also one of the highlights of the film for me. The animators did a great job making him look ridiculous and funny, but he does a great job portraying all that silliness in his voice acting. The best acting and really the best and most interesting character ultimately ends up being the stray cat, Mittens, played by Susie Essman from "Curb Your Enthusiasm". Her New Yorker cat character is both sarcastic and rather touching at some moments. She's a layered character, and in my opinion she makes Bolt's dog personality much less appealing. Many of the best and most compelling parts of the film come in exchanges with her.

The writing is where I take most issue with the film. The concept is clever and fairly original, it showed a lot of promise early on. As I previously mentioned the first 30 or so minutes are the best part of the film. That's only because it seems to kind of fall into a trap of family movies cliche's. The dog falls into a box and gets shipped across the country to a strange place. He befriends other animals who he can talk to and embarks on a cross country trek to get to his "person" because he is of course a loyal dog. They are later caught by an animal patrol catcher who takes them back to the pound. The list of animal movie cliche's goes on... I probably could have guessed all of that going into the movie really. It's just not very creative to kind of cut and paste events from other movies and apply the new characters to it. These are not the only examples of this, but it's enough to give you an idea of Bolt's major weak point. It also simply seems to meander in the center part of the film. The characters jump out of a moving vehicle one to many times or something. It doesn't seem to quite know what to do with itself right around the mid point of the movie. However the writing is mostly passable and at times the dialogue is fairly clever so most of this can easily be forgiven by someone who's younger, and for the most part forgiven by parents going out to have a laugh with the whole family.

Bolt is in 3-D in select theaters, but nothing really jumped out at me about the 3-D presentation. Quite literally. It's not interactive like many are, generally its bad when they're too interactive, but I also didn't really see the point in it being 3-D other than the fact that it's a marketing ploy these days. I'd say if you have the option of spending an extra 2 dollars a ticket for 3-D (I think it really might be more because often they don't allow you to buy kids tickets so you end up buying everyone adult tickets plus 2 dollars) or skipping it and seeing the film in a regular 2-D presentation I'd say you aren't losing much by saving your money and going for the traditional approach.

"Bolt" is a solid family film that's quite likable, and totally appropriate for everyone in the family. It's flaws will be annoying for some adults, however children will undoubtedly take no notice, and I'm sure all kids will love the film and want a Bolt stuffed animal as it's end credits arise. It's got plenty of reasons for people of all ages to go, but it's certainly not totally perfect. I guarantee that most of you will like it more than I did, and I thought it was pretty good.

6.5/10.