Bolt (2008)

Bolt (2008)

With John Lasseter’s increased involvement, Bolt continued Meet the Robinson’s attempts to revitalise the struggling Disney formula, further improving on the computer animation quality and storytelling techniques. However, while Lasseter’s involvement is not inherently a bad thing, I’m not sure it does that many favours for Bolt, which ultimately ends up feeling a lot more like somebody trying to remake a Pixar movie than it does its own, unique film.

The computer animation here is much, much better than anything we’ve seen from Disney before, in fact, it’s such a jump from the previous year’s Meet the Robinsons alone that it’s kind of astounding. The quality and attention to detail, particularly in the background and the textures and the character designs are all very nice and finally start to feel like Disney’s 2D animation has been transferred into the third dimension, unlike something likeChicken Little or Dinosaur, which just felt like ugly or unappealing computer models which didn’t look like Disney characters at all. The Disney animators still haven’t fully perfected their style of a computer animated movie – as, amongst other things, the visual style ofBolt owes a little too much to Pixar – but it’s definitely a big step up from their initial attempts and you can see they’re very close to developing an approach that totally works for them.

The film has a basic, but interesting concept, following the eponymous Bolt, a dog who plays the role of a superhero on a TV show, but thinks it’s all real, who has to get home to Hollywood to “rescue” his owner, Penny, after he is accidentally shipped to New York. This is not a bad idea, but it has been done better, before, particularly in Toy Story, showing yet another debt to Pixar; this isn’t that noticeable at first, but honestly, the longer the movie goes on, the more and more it feels like you’re just watching Toy Story with animals. I don’t know what it is but I just can’t get into Bolt; it’s a decent idea, the pacing is good, it has an emotional core and it hits all the appropriate story points, but it just never really feels like it gets off the ground for me, even though it seems to do everything it should. Maybe that’s the problem, that it’s too predictable, too by-the-book, too generic, it does things exactly how you would expect this kind of story to do them and never surprises you; the film doesn’t do anything wrong, per se, but it does so little with its initially strong concept that it leaves you feeling disappointed. Honestly, as deliberately cheesy and over-the-top as it is, I think I would have rather seen the film follow the plot of Bolt’s TV show, with the story of a teenager and her super dog fighting an evil terrorist organisation, than this rather simplistic road trip story; there, they could have parodied the nature of such shows like Johnny Quest, alongside typical superhero and action movie tropes, whilst having fun with seeing just how over-the-top and silly they could make things, but still maintaining an emotional connection between Penny and Bolt. As it is, Boltjust has nothing to sink its teeth into.

The characters are also generic and distinctly Pixar in their designs and personalities – Bolt himself is pretty boring; as the arrogant, oblivious blowhard who thinks he’s a superhero but is really just a normal guy, he’s a lot like Buzz Lightyear, except with much less personality. There’s nothing unlikeable about him, but the writers do so little with this idea that he ends up left to do very little himself; even when he discovers he’s just an actor and doesn’t have super powers, in comparison to Buzz’s mental and emotional breakdown, Bolt just kind of shrugs and says ‘eh whatever’, which sums up his character pretty effectively. Penny is a sweet, friendly girl, but not much else, though she does fall out of focus early on, only occasionally being seen to be sad that Bolt is missing; in these respects she’s a lot like Andy, the benevolent owner that Woody/Bolt is so desperate to get back to, but they start to worry if they truly care about them at all, only to be rewarded for their faith in the end when they are welcomed back with open arms. She’s a plot device, something for Bolt to get back to, nothing more. 

Mittens the cat is a typical snarky sidekick – cynical, sarcastic, cunning, she plays the straight man to the other two main characters and calls them out on their wacky behaviour. Her role is a necessary one for the kind of jokes the movies wants to tell and some of her interactions with the other characters do have good, humorous set-ups, but somehow the joke never really works its way all the way through, at least for me anyway. This aspect of her character resembles Woody in the first Toy Story, where he plays the sarcastic, neurotic straight man to Buzz, while her softer side resembles Jessie from Toy Story 2, as we learn she was once a housecat, but was abandoned by her human owners and has since come to believe that any love a human shows for its pet is superficial and temporary, just as Jessie believes that all children will ultimately forget about their toys, like her owner Emily did with her. Again, not a bad idea for a character, but clearly not a very original one either. Rhino the hamster is the goofy comic relief; he’s an eccentric, obsessive fan of Bolt who wants to be a hero too and is constantly hamming it up in his attempts to do so. He’s a bit more annoying than funny, but not excessively so and he does get a couple of funny lines; he’s a good representative for the film’s sense of humour as a whole – you can see what the writers are going for and technically it should work, but somehow, you rarely find yourself laughing. Similarly, there’s nothing wrong with these characters, but there’s nothing all that right about them either; I didn’t dislike them, but never found myself really caring about them, they are just another part of the film which is objectively done well, but never really excels beyond doing what it’s supposed to do.

Bolt is a perfectly decent movie and at times quite a fun one, with some exciting action sequences, but ultimately it feels lacking in identity. It borrows too liberally from Pixar movies, particularly Toy Story and seems to exist solely to tick off a bunch of boxes in respect to its narrative and characterisation, rather than to tell a story it seemed especially interested in telling. It’s okay and mostly a step in the right direction compared to some of Disney’s last few films, being technically better made and much better animated than Meet the Robinsons – if not quite as creative – but Bolt is, ironically enough, missing the spark necessary to take it any further than just being okay.

5.5/10