Bolt

Already tagged by some reviewers as an animated riff on earlier Disney animal-oriented features such as 1993’s Homeward Bound, which was a talking-critter redo of 1963’s The Incredible Journey, Bolt
deals with a pooch who functions as a high-tech Rin Tin Tin, as he aids
his owner Penny (voice by Miley Cyrus) in one wild espionage adventure
after another. Alas, the super-duper action is all part of a weekly
Hollywood TV series and Penny is just a child actress—but nobody has
clued in Bolt (John Travolta) that he’s not the amped-up canine he
thinks he is. 

The decision to keep the doggie in the dark was made by the show’s imperious director (James Lipton from Inside the Actor’s Studio, one of Bolt’s
many inside jokes) in order to extract a more truthful performance from
his four-legged star. So when the season ends on a cliffhanger with
Penny in seeming peril (part of the director’s gambit to keep the show
on the air), Bolt breaks free from his Tinseltown trailer and hunkers
down into rescue mode. It takes a long while, however, for Bolt to
realize that he lacks powers such as his “superbark,” as his emotional
journey takes him to New York City for a fateful meeting with wiseacre
alley cat Mittens (Susie Essman), then on a cross-country road trip
back to California. Along the way, the cat and dog pick up a boob-tube
fanatic named Rhino (Mark Walton), a high-energy hamster in a plastic
ball. 

Three’s company: Bolt, Mittens and Rhino embark on a road trip in Disney’s Bolt.

Chris Williams and Byron Howard
co-directed the dependable script from Dan Fogelman and Williams, which
sometimes goes overboard with insider gags that even kids who read Variety
might not get (Greg Germann as the oily agent delivers most of the
dialogue concerning junkets and audience demographics), but more often
finds a sweet spot between not-too-syrupy sentiment and razzle-dazzle
action. The spectacular opening sequences involving Bolt and Penny’s
flight from numerous adversaries plays as a nudge-nudge spoof on
Pixar’s The Incredibles although adults may find an
exhilaration factor that rivals similar slam-bang interludes found in
Jason Bourne or James Bond films. 

Voice-wise, Miley Cyrus as Penny doesn’t
have much to do aside from moping her dog’s loss, although John
Travolta taps into some Method-acting angst to convey Bolt’s bravado in
the early reels, followed by his dog’s later admission that his powers
are nonexistent—until his well-timed bowwow carries a special wow of
its own in the finale. Still, Bolt is stolen by Mittens’ voicework from Susie Essman, just as easily as she steals scenes from Larry David in HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm,
and Rhino’s manic alter ego Mark Walton, a Disney visual development
artist who read Rhino’s lines as part of a temporary voice track. The
filmmakers liked the performance so much that they kept Walton behind
the microphone. Bolt’s best gag, however, concerns the
differences between East Coast and West Coast pigeons: The feathered
friends sound vaguely Brooklynese and Runyonesque in the Big Apple,
while in Los Angeles they’re pitching high-concept plots about aliens. 

—Bill DeLapp