Only an overzealous dog lover would make a cat give a speech about having a dog complex defined by a secret desire to be a dog. Why can’t cats get any respect? Never mind. It’s all about the hamster, anyway.
“Bolt,” Disney’s riff on “An Incredible Journey,” delivered in gorgeously rendered 3-D animation, starts out with Bolt (Travolta), a brave dog who is the victim of a monstrous “Truman Show” deception: He doesn’t know the TV show he stars in as a superpowered canine is all fake. So when his beloved and perpetually endangered human Penny (Cyrus) is separated from him in the latest episode’s cliffhanger and a mailing mishap puts him on the other side of the country, Bolt doggedly sets off, as always, to the rescue. No sooner can you say fish out of water, however, than do the comic misunderstandings pile up, beginning with the discrepancy between Bolt’s self-conception as a superdog and the world’s far less super reality. Throw in unwittingly captured Mittens (Essman), a cat who “hunts” for food by subjecting pigeons to a protection racket, and a hamster whose love of Bolt’s TV show puts him in the company of Star Wars fanboys, and we have all the elements for that distinctively Disney brand of heart-warming against-all-odds buddy-movie.
Startling Realism
It’s all very sweet, the cat-dog-hamster bonding, the jokes about a character who thinks he can do things he can’t – echo of “Mystery Men” and just about any superhero parody – are worth a few chuckles. The quality of the settings and character design, in marked contrast to the cartoonish style of “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa,” display an architectural obsessiveness that creates shots of startling realism and cinematic strength. And we get some spiffy action and things that go boom, punctuated rather humourously by the fact that much of the big action sequences consist of a movie-within-a-movie.
But it’s the hamster, named Rhino (Walton), that really makes the movie. Every superhero, super or not, needs a sidekick as both enabler and pick-me-up. Bolt gets his in the film’s version of King Julien or Genie. Rhino is the ubiquitous comic relief in a film that needed a dose of fresh character to up the laugh level; a manic, scene-stealing furball of attitude and charming delusion energetically voiced by Mark Walton. Part of the gold stems from the ridiculousness of a goofy and good-hearted hamster in a plastic ball going on a cross-country adventure. The rest is facial expressions and Jack Black-like vocal mannerisms. In a film that could easily slide into the pleasantly diverting average of efforts not associated with Pixar, it falls to a domesticated rodent to save the day.
Entertainment Value: ** (out of two)
Technical Quality: ** (out of two)
Bolt. Directed by Byron Howard and Chris Williams. Written by Dan Fogelman and Chris Williams. Voices of John Travolta, Miley Cyrus, Susie Essman, Mark Walton and Malcolm McDowell. 96 minutes. Rated PG for some mild action and peril.
Frédérik invites you to discuss this film and more at his blog (frederik-sisa.blogspot.com)