Column:
'Bolt' is a solid film
The film is both thoughtful and lighthearted.
Published Dec. 1, 2008
"Bolt" is a Disney movie in a tradition that seemed completely lost before the Pixar merger. It looks past recent bombs like "Home on the Range," past other studios' successes like "Shrek" and past even the last Disney renaissance as a vehicle for adult-contemporary superhit soundtracks to "The Lion King" and "Tarzan." This is a Disney movie like "Dumbo" or "The Rescuers"; it pauses to reflect in moments where "The Lion King" would insert a Seal song, or "Meet the Robinsons" would add another abrasive, fast-talking sidekick. It is not perfect, by any means, but as a non-Pixar CG movie, it is in a class by itself. The movie's wonderful pacing is aided by a great premise. Bolt the dog is the star of "Bolt" the TV show, where every week he saves his real owner, Penny, from a fake mad scientist with the help of his fake superpowers. The show's producers have conspired to hide all evidence of the fakery from their method-acting lead, and he's gone through life constantly on edge in a kind of vicious "The Truman Show," convinced that the world outside his trailer is filled with the once-a-week dangers he's spent his entire life fighting. Penny, a spunky secret agent on camera, can only watch and sigh as he growls at his own shadow. When she's taken hostage in the first-ever cliffhanger episode of the show, Bolt tries to save her and is shipped, deus ex machina class, across the country. With the help of two prototypical Disney sidekicks - a streetwise, emotionally wounded cat and a frenetic hamster - he travels across America and learns about his non-powers. A series of warm, funny vignettes follow, set against the open road - there's the cat teaching Bolt to beg at a trailer park, and a lesson in being a house pet that takes place aboard a prefab home on a semi truck - and when Bolt finally gets back to Hollywood the obligatory misunderstandings and redemptions seem justified. Of course, even this plot could have fallen into the hands of Disney circa 2003 and become completely unwatchable. The difference is in the execution. Post-Pixar there's a willingness to slow down, to let the audience infer things, that wasn't there before. There's a subtlety to even the slapstick moments that makes the film as a whole seem less creepily eager to please than CG also-rans past. The most pleasant surprise was the thoughtfulness that went into directing the TV show's action scenes; clearly "shot" and inventive, they're better than just about any real action movie has managed this year. If the movie is too predictable, it's partially because you're older than you were when you saw "Dumbo"; if the hamster's kung-fu moves and sputtering banter are a little too keyed up and Dreamworksian for this thoughtful movie, well, Disney might be fast studies but they aren't that fast. For its faults, "Bolt" is a fine film, funny and intelligent in a way that belies its lightness, and an encouraging one, confirming that the Disney end of Disney-Pixar is just as capable of turning out Disney movies as the Pixar side.
