Stunt Hound
3-D Hero Dog Comes Down to Earth
"Bolt" is a revved-up animated 3-D kid’s movie about a canine television star named Bolt (voiced by John Travolta), capable of all sorts of amazing feats on his self-titled TV show.
For the sake of Bolt's convincing performances the show's producers have convinced Bolt that his super powers are real.
The tow-headed little pooch performs all sorts of eye-popping stunts to protect his action hero mistress Penny (voiced by Miley Cyrus) until an accidental fall sends Bolt unaccompanied from L.A. to Manhattan where the confused little guy meets up with a streetwise cat named Mittens (Susie Essman).
Desperate to return to Hollywood, and into Penny's waiting arms, Bolt gets Mittens to help navigate the cross country journey. Along the way the pair attract a chubby hamster named Rhino (Mark Walton) who gets around via a clear plastic ball. An avid fan of Bolt's TV show, Rhino acts accordingly as an action-minded sidekick to help out his troubled hero.
"Bolt is full of action-movie spectacle translated into a humorous animated form. The extended chase sequence that opens it is like a cross between "Men In Black" and "Armageddon," with a little bit of the old "Dr. Strange" comic book thrown in for good measure. Penny's television dad has been kidnapped by Dr. Calico (Malcolm McDowell), an evil villain with a large cat's-eye where his right eyeball should be. Bolt pulls Penny on her motorized scooter to escape a cavalcade of black helicopters, ominous cars, and body-armored motorcyclists.
With a lightening bolt insignia stamped on his side Bolt stops giant vehicles, jumps huge distances, shoots a laser beam from his eyes, and employs a "super bark" that sends earth-rippling shock waves across miles of area to halt an army of Dr. Calico's military forces. In ironically balancing the grand scale of a big-budget Hollywood action movie, with 3-D cartoon animation, "Bolt" sends up the kind of entertainment that kids have come to expect from such blockbusters. It's the kind of hyper modern cartoon show that would be hugely popular if it were an actual television show.
The story's hook is about the distance between television/movie fantasy and the personal limits of a little dog robbed of the simple pleasures of a regular hound. Hollywood moguls have brainwashed Bolt into believing his own press. At night he's relegated to sleeping alone in an empty studio trailer where the cat actors that play Dr. Calico's minions come to taunt him about his delusions of grandeur.
It's thanks to Mittens, and some tough knocks against hard surfaces, that Bolt arrives at the realization that he's not the indestructible dog that he's been taught to believe he is. The brilliance of the movie's message is that it comes wrapped in cartoon story that's already twice removed from your seat in the cinema, even as the unobtrusive 3-D effects go a long way toward keeping the action in front of your nose.
At a time when there's typically only a couple of G or PG-rated movies released each month, "Bolt" straddles several fences of pop culture. Miley Cyrus's limited presence as the mostly absent Penny lends a fad-of-the-day significance, while John Travolta carries the lion's share of the movie with a seamless vocal performance as Bolt. But it's the energetic roly-poly Hamster in the little ball that captures the movie's fun-loving side best. Mark Walton deserves special praise for his infectiously funny performance. Unlike "The Incredibles" or "Cars," this is an animated effort that could spawn a sequel, or perhaps even a spin-off; "Action Hamster" anyone?
