Bolt

For my next film this year I decided to go for something more light hearted and simple. I therefore chose Bolt. The computer animated film about a dog (John Travolta) who truly believes that he has super powers not realising all along that his life revolves around a simple television show and that he has no such powers. After Bolt accidently ends up in the real world and on the other side of America he teams up with a cat called ‘Mittens’ and a hamster called ‘Rhino’ to journey from New York to Hollywood to re-unite Bolt with his owner (Miley Cyrus).

When you boil this film down it is essentially a road movie in which along the way Bolt truly discovers his real self. One interesting thing about this film is that it applies a very interesting concept similar to that of 1998’s The Truman Show in which the main protagonist believes in a false reality, much to the amusement of many of the supporting character.

Overall this film is your typical animated adventure for children. It uses similar narrative techniques to such Pixar classic as Toy Story and Finding Nemo. However it never lives up to their ingenuity or freshness and the humour is also rather cliché (although at my viewing there was a middle aged woman in hysterics).

In all honesty the only reason I chose to watch this was because it is presented in 3D and I had never seen a 3D film before. This was quite an interesting way to watch the film, especially during more dynamic camera shots. However this particular film didn’t offer much extra for 3D viewers, in fact some of the most impressive shots featured in the trailers. The only other alternative was My Bloody Valentine but there was no hope in hell I was going to watch a cheap tacky teen horror out of choice.

Although I like the idea of 3D I fell that the films shown using it are more akin to fair ground attractions. One hopes however that George Lucas will finally get round to re-releasing his Star Wars saga in 3D (without pointless tinkering please George).

Overall Bolt was yet another solid example of animated cinema, one with a few interesting ideas.

3 STARS