Bolt

Okay, if you listen to the show you know that I have something of a soft spot for the Walt Disney Company. I grew up watching the movies. My family vacation was to Disney World in Orlando every year. I worked for the Disney Store while I was in college. There is probably a good chance I cannot give an unbiased review of Disney's latest offering, Bolt. Also, my wife and I don't have kids. So that means that we can't enjoy it from the stand point of being parents, which is also probably an unfair way to review the movie.

Bolt isn't all bad. It really isn't all that good though. It clocks in at just about 95 minutes and maybe 30 of those are enjoyable. The problem is they are all at the end, so by the time anything funny or visually stunning hits the screen adults are already bored out of their skulls.

The movie has good characters. Every moment Rhino the hamster is on screen is enjoyable. Pigeons are used to represent the locals in each town Bolt and his cohorts visit. The New York pigeons (which are recycled versions of the Goodfeathers from the animated series Animaniacs)



are all very funny and the Hollywood pigeons are even better. Look out for a delightful cameo from stand up comedian Nick Swardson!

Visually Bolt is at it's best when we follow Bolt, Rhino, and alley cat Mittens as they travel across America. The Las Vegas sequence is breathtaking and ends with a nice homage to Ocean's 11.

What was Bolt missing? A lot. The jokes all seemed to just kind of miss the mark. None of them were terribly funny. There was nothing about Bolt, his owner Penny, or really any other character that made me emotionally connected to them. Mittens' back story is the only one that kind of tugs at your heart strings.

I really hate this push towards digital animation. I enjoy a Pixar movie as much as anyone, but Bolt is digitally animated just for the sake of being digitally animated. It made me long for the hand-drawn Disney Classics I grew up on like Peter Pan and Pinocchio. Hell, Disney animators did things with Dumbo that are still mind blowing to this day. Digital animation takes out the innovation and invention that made Disney special and different to begin with.

I really wanted to like Bolt. I really did. I have been following the progress of the movie for a while. You can get the whole story on the film that used to be called American Dog here. Trust me, that article is more interesting than the movie.

The Greek gives it a C.