Bolt

Synopsis
Bolt is the animated comedy adventure of the fall. It starts off with Bolt as just a playful puppy, then you see his person, Penny, adopt him and they seem to love each other right after that. Then it immediately burst in to an adventurous chase with Penny trying to find her kidnapped dad. She just couldn’t do it without Bolt there to help her, so after fighting armed guards on motorcycles and some helicopters they finally get on their way to save Penny’s dad. Too bad it’s all just a TV show though; the thing is though Bolt thinks it’s all in real life and not fake. But when the ratings for the show are going down because of the happy endings, they decide to make an ending which wasn’t happy, which ended up with Penny getting kidnapped. But since Bolt thinks it’s real, he escapes from the TV studio to go out and find and save Penny. But when he gets lost and can’t find where to go, he gets a cat to help him, which he thinks knows where Penny is. Now they must travel across the country to go and fins Penny. Along the road they also meet Bolt’s number 1 fan, who’s a hamster, who decides to help. But along the journey, Bolt finds out he really doesn’t have super powers, but still tries to go and save Penny. Now the three of them must go and save Penny, but along their journey it seems they have made quite a few friends along the journey. John Travolta, Miley Cyrus, Susie Essman, Mark Walton, and Malcolm McDowell all have a main voice in this comedy adventure.

Acting/Characters
The voicing overall was actually pretty good. Of course I could tell it was John Travolta right from the start, it’s pretty easy to tell his voice. But as the movie went on I actually sort of forgot it was him playing Bolt, made it’s just because I got into Travolta’s character too much. He really did an amazing job for an animated movie, I could tell the emotion from his character just from his voice, and a little help for how his character was animated. Miley Cyrus did surprisingly well, I wouldn’t say great or anything, but seeing with how’s she’s acted before, she did a good job. I didn’t really get as much emotion from her character though, but then again, she didn’t really have as much screen time as Travolta had to give emotion to his character. Susie Essman did a pretty good job as well; I could tell her emotion through her voice at times, I couldn’t throughout the whole movie. Her character was pretty typical though, starts off bad, but then by the end the truth about her comes out and she becomes good by the end of the movie. I really haven’t seen her in anything before, but she was pretty funny in Bolt. Mark Walton was hilarious in Bolt, which may have been because of his character though. The cuteness of his character mixed with his lines, just made him my favorite character in the whole movie. I really had no idea that Malcolm McDowell was in this until I got home and found it out online. I really couldn’t tell that was him by his voice.

Plot
I actually really liked the story of Bolt, even though I think it would’ve worked out better if they had just gave Bolt his superpowers and made the movie like that. I can see why they wouldn’t do that though; it’d be like a dog version of The Incredibles. I really loved the beginning sequence of the movie, definitely my favorite part of the whole movie, the one scene alone was a full 10/10 for me, too bad it didn’t quite stay like that the rest of the movie. The story turned out to be really funny, the funniest animated movie of the year so far, it’s still not the best though. The one thing I didn’t like about it was that it had another typical ending, it had a great chance not to have a typical ending like that, but they decided to give it a happy ending because of it being animated. The story really never slows down at all throughout the movie, because it was either an action scene or a comedy scene. There was actually quite a few drama scenes mixed in there with the rest of the movie.



My Thoughts On It
Overall, I think it’s a great family movie to watch and if you’re looking for a family movie to watch with your family on Thanksgiving, this would be a great choice. It’s my second favorite animated movie of the year so far, right after Wall-E and right before Kung Fu Panda. I was actually quite surprised with it, because I never really thought Disney had good animated movies, like how Bolt was made, that weren’t made from Pixar. The animation for Bolt really is great; I would say it has just as great of animation as Wall-E had. It didn’t really have all kiddy jokes in it and had some good jokes that more than just kids would laugh at, so I’m actually surprised that we’ve had so many animated movies like that lately. I definitely think it’s worth a viewing in theaters, but if you really don’t like animated movies that much, it’s probably better if you just wait for the DVD for. But if you are a fan of animated movies, it’d definitely be one I recommend seeing before it leaves theaters.

8/10