Bolt
Year: 2008
Rating: PG
Length: 96 minutes / 1.60 hours
Mid-2000s Disney was an interesting time for their CGI movies. Pixar had been dominating for at least a decade and created gorgeous films with heartwarming plots. Struggling to keep up with this new medium, Disney still hadn’t fully committed to CGI, and it has not aged well. Just as an example, think about how incredible WALL-E (2008) looked and realize it came out the same year as Bolt (2008). Not to say that Bolt is a terrible movie, it just feels bland in comparison—both on looks and plot.
Part of the problem of this era of CGI movies is how dated they can feel. Sure, Disney was using some CGI in their animated films even as far back as The Little Mermaid (1989). It’s just that Pixar seemed to understand that humans needed to be more like caricatures to escape the uncanny valley. The people in Bolt look so weird and wrong that it’s almost a bit distracting. If they didn’t play so strongly in the B-plot of finding a replacement for Bolt, they could have been avoided and the better-looking animals could have carried the visual momentum of the movie.
The premise for Bolt makes sense: most animal actors don’t know they’re not in a movie, but with Bolt (John Travolta), the studio has to pull a Truman Show (1998) subterfuge to get the best acting out of this dog. When Bolt gets lost, he is exposed to the real world as he tries to return to his owner. The world-wise street cat Mittens (Susie Essman) and super-fan hamster Rhino (Mark Walton) made this Homeward Bound (1993)-type journey more entertaining. Even despite these bright spots, Bolt remains quite average in so many ways.
A painfully average film in one of Disney’s dark eras, I give Bolt 3.0 stars out of 5.
