Word: disneyized
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...Walt Disney started out with a mouse, 80 years ago this week, but his company has done all right by dogs too. If Lady and the Tramp and 101 Dalmatians can't be numbered among the animation studio's most ambitious projects, they both had a high satisfaction quotient. No wonder: the canine attributes of curiosity, affection and unshakable loyalty are an ideal fit for Disney family values of any era. (Cats, not so much.) From the live-action pup opera Old Yeller in the '50s, to the mixed-media friskiness of this fall's Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Disney...
...Bolt, the first Disney animated feature made under the supervision of Pixar creative boss John Lasseter, has a premise straight out of Chihuahua: an adorable, pampered L.A. dog gets dropped into an alien environment and has to find its way back home, learning lessons of friendship, confidence and self-reliance en route. (It's also the premise of 140,000 other movies about animals, kids or hobbits.) Bolt fits this familiar mold without looking moldy. Its visual style is unpretentiously attractive, with a limber graphic line, and there's little showboating in the design or the dialogue. Directors Chris Williams...
...endearing as they are preposterous - Bolt is shipped to New York City, where he strikes up a quick animosity with a sassy cat named Mittens (Curb Your Enthusiasm's Susie Essman). Their itinerary will be no secret to the youngest of viewers: cat and dog, joined by Rhino (Disney animator Mark Walton), a hamster who travels in a Plexiglas ball. Through Rhino, a diehard fan of the TV show, Bolt realizes that his powers aren't so super, and he comes to suspect that Penny was just another jaded Hollywood actress who'd forget about him when she left...
...course each character gets to show a heroism all the more special for being displayed without special effects. Indeed, Rhino's climactic declaration of purpose - that "All my dreaming has prepared me for this moment" - might be the motto, not just of this very satisfying film, but of the Disney-Pixar animators. They're smart kids who dream for a living...
...stray cat. Rhino saves the day and the movie. “Fully awesome!”—the rotund rodent’s favorite phrase—is probably the only appropriate way to describe him. His mannerisms and one-liners are characteristic of the best Disney sidekicks, such as Dory from “Nemo.” “Bolt” is the first animated Disney movie created specifically to be viewed in 3-D. While this makes for some great action scenes of Bolt blowing up scary robots, the effect is mostly...