Bolt

I see very few movies, and normally animated, sentimental, kid-and-animal stories aren't high on my priority list.  But in the absence of tickets for any Broadway show I wanted to see yesterday afternoon, I ended up in a movie theater with two friends watching the latest Disney/Pixar effort, Bolt, in 3-D.

I'd never seen a 3-D movie before (yeah, I know, culturally deprived, that's me) and wasn't necessarily looking forward to the experience.  But after a few initial bits of distracting overdoing with things coming right at the us, the filmmakers settled down and mostly used it to give an attractive solidity to the animation rather than constantly making the audience flinch away from oncoming buses and things.  We had rather sturdy plastic-framed 3-D glasses provided by the theater (and recycled afterwards).  I kept lifting mine up to see what the movie looked like without them (blurry in places, but quite watchable in others).  This probably helped deflect any potential cute-overdose.

The movie's essential story is predictable enough: girl loves dog, girl loses dog, dog makes his way cross-country against all odds to rejoin girl.  But the package they wrapped the story in was quite a hoot, with just as much in it for adults as for kids.  The dog, Bolt, has been kept so carefully sheltered by his Hollywood handlers so that he never realizes he is living in a Truman Show-like constructed reality.  He thinks he really does have superpowers and that there really is an evil, cat-loving villain out to get his person, Penny, not realizing that she is an actress, not a secret agent-adventurer, and that the whole thing is a popular television show.

So life is good until Bolt is accidentally shipped cross-country in a box full of styrofoam packing peanuts and finds himself unaccountably without his super-bark, metal-melting stare, etc., a loss he attributes to Kryptonite the styrofoam.  Eventually hooking up with a cynical New York street cat named Mittens who instructs him, hilariously, in normal dog behavior and a rotund, starstruck hamster named Rhino, he starts heading home to California and Penny.  The expected lessons about the value of friendship and loyalty are delivered, the cold-hearted cynicism of show business revealed, and everyone lives as happily ever after as you could want.  I cried at the moving bits and laughed at the silly bits and generally had a reasonably good time having the obvious emotional buttons pushed in the expected sequence.

Not being a dog person, I found Bolt a bit too earnest and more than a little dim, and the premise that he wouldn't have noticed that his super-powers only worked on the set takes some serious suspension of disbelief.  I liked the movie much better once the sarcastic Mittens appeared and especially once Rhino joined the group, rolling around in his plastic hamster-ball like a small, furry fanboy-from-hell, all ready for some dangerous adventure ("Die! Diiiie!") in the company of his supposed superhero if he has to roll all the way to California to find it.  I was reminded of the aliens in Galaxyquest.  Also making the movie for me were the extremely well-animated pigeons, especially the script-pitching Hollywood ones.  I suspect that scene would fly right over the head of most kids, but I'm glad they put in some goodies for older viewers.

I am not especially good at recognizing voices, so it was news to me in the credits that Bolt was voiced by John Travolta.  Penny was voiced by Miley Cyrus, a young actress I've heard of but couldn't tell you why.  Other lead voices were Malcolm McDowell as the evil Dr. Calico, Susie Essman as Mittens, and Mark Walton as Rhino.  McDowell I'd heard of, of course, though again I didn't realize who the voice was until the credits rolled.

There was a bonus short film about a anthropomorphic car (from another Pixar film, I assume) drag racing in Tokyo which was reasonably entertaining even though I had no idea of the source material.

So was the fun frosting enough to make this a brilliant movie?  Nah.  But it was lots of fun and a good way to spend a really cold afternoon.  Go in with modest expectations and it won't disappoint.

Externalities: I was amused by the extremely vertical Manhattan movie theater: up and up and up we went to find our film.  The hand-dryers in the restrooms were also unexpectedly interesting.  They were motion-activated by drawing the hands slowly upward between two heating fans.  This was weirdly fascinating in the same way a lava lamp is, and all of us found it necessary to go to the restrooms and indulge in a couple of rounds of experimental hand-drying.  Hurrah for modern technology!

Comments

[Serge]

Can we expect your bookshelves to soon display, not just a sheep and a carburator, but also a motion-activated handdryer?

As for Bolt, I didn't see it, but it sounds like I should put it on our NetFlix queue, as a divertissement if not as a monument of Cinema. The premise is silly, but it has to be accepted or else there will be no story even if it makes Bolt look dim. Are cats smarter than dogs? Maybe. Dogs, on the other hand, are social animals and smart at picking up cues about what is acceptable. Even my dumbbell Freya can tell when someone has committed a big no-no while Agatha the Cat Genius seems unable to understand, even after my frequently yelling at her, that the couch is not a scratching post.

[Susan de Guardiola]

Serge,
It wouldn't fit on my bookshelves - it was about 18" by 12".

I expect I'm a cat person because I am not much of a social animal myself. Cats make sense to me, and I admire their independence and general indifference to/incomprehension of rules.

[Serge]

Speaking of cats... Our older cat, Jefferson, is the typical male cat, meaning he's such a pushover that everybody picks on him, including Agatha.

[Serge]

Speaking of dogs... Years ago, I read an article in Science News about how their association with humans started. If I remember correctly, they might have been wolves who couldn't hack in the pack so they were thrown out.

Yup... Dogs are the misfits of the lupine world.

Talk about the revenge of the nerds...

[Neil Willcox]

Miley Cyrus plays pop-star Hannah Montana in the eponymous series beloved of small girls everywhere. There's some pop music associated with the series/character/movie etc. too I'm told, although I couldn't pick it out of some kind of modern chart girl-pop line-up if such a thing ever happened.

[AJ]

Miley Cyrus is also the daughter of 90s country music one-hit-wonder Billy Ray Cyrus.

I'm not too interested in Bolt, but I do enjoy the current trend of 3d animated movies. We just saw Coraline in 3d this week, and it was pretty cool. I do wish our theaters had some sort of recycling receptacle for the glasses, though. Or that they'd give you a discount if you kept them and brought them to future 3d shows.

[Susan de Guardiola]

The NYC theater had a recycling bin for the glasses and a prominently-posted request to place the glasses in it. I was thinking of keeping mine but decided to be a good girl and recycle them.

[Serge]

The theater where I saw Coraline also recycles the 3D glasses. It was nice not to get the headache that used to result from putting glasses on top of glasses. Still, I'd have preferred watching it in 2D.

[Marilee J. Layman]

I saw Coraline last night and was considering keeping the glasses, but then I realized they weren't going to charge me less for having my own next time, so I recycled them. I had trouble with my regular glasses in the last 30 minutes or so -- they started pressing on my nose.

[AJ]

Well, next time I go see a 3D movie, I'll have to ask them about the recycling.

Susan, since they don't recycle them here, I have a couple of pairs floating around. If you'd like, I'll drop a pair in the mail for you :)

[Susan de Guardiola]

AJ,
That would be great! Thanks!

I was filling out my Oscar pool ballot for work, pretty much by guesswork since the only three pertinent films I've seen are Iron Man, Milk, and Bolt. The latter is up against Kung Fu Panda and WALL-E for the animated film award. It'll be interesting to see which end up on the Hugo ballot as well. If I get more than one or two Oscar guesses correct I'll be astonished.

Part of our ballot was a question on who the first and last people in the "in memoriam" montage would be. I didn't even know they had such a montage (never watched the Oscars in my life) so I went back to that Turner Classic Movies video Serge posted about here back in December or so to get some names. I guessed Cyd Charisse first and Paul Newman last.

[Serge]

I'd include Charlton Heston.

[Susan de Guardiola]

I only get a "first" and "last" guess. I was guessing "last" would be the most important person, and I was torn between Newman, Pollack, and Heston. I decided I liked Paul Newman best, so I guessed him. That's a more substantive basis than I had for most of my ballot!

Office games: very weird things. They seem to really like them here.

[Serge]

My top would have had to be Chuck Heston. I didn't care at all for his politics, but many of my favorite movies had him in them.

[Serge]

Speaking of cats and dogs... I was quite amused by 2001's Cats & Dogs, in which the cats and dogs of our reality are shown using technology. The dogs do it to protect humans. Cats do it to try to enslave us. There is an evil Russian kitty who coughs up hairballs with grenades inside of them, and ninja cat assassins, and mastermind cat Mister Tinkles, who, after a maid dresses him up, furiously exclaims:

"Evil does not wear a bonnet!"