Bolt

This film will be slightly hard to review mainly because I have only seen it for the first time rather recently. With that said I was able to go into it with a fairly open mind.

Let's get the big thing out of the way. Miley Cyrus makes this film harder to watch when her voice pops up. It's distracting and takes me out of the movie when her face pops up in my mind. While this can happen with other famous celebs, Cyrus is much more....cringe worthy. So. Moving on!

Bolt has some pretty great visuals, though the film (like the other CGI ones) does give me a stronger 'Pixar' or 'Dreamworks' feeling than it does a 'Disney' one. A lot of this is because Disney had spent a good number of decades working on producing amazing hand-drawn films and they managed to make it their own. However when they moved into CGI films they weren't as familiar with this territory and it really feels like they didn't know what they were doing and relied more on what other companies have done. By the time Tangled hit this does seem to have lessened a great deal.

Any ways. Back on track!

This film does more than give an 'off' feeling for just the visuals. The story, while a good one, does feel like I've seen it before. If anything this film strongly reminded me of Homeward Bound in having three animal friends, who talk when humans aren't around, going on a journey together. There was even a scene where they were caught by humans and had to escape. The other familiar bit was with two of the characters. Bolt really resembles Buzz Lightyear in the sense that both believe they are someone they are not. With Buzz he thinks he's really a space ranger, and with Bolt he believes he has super powers. The second character to give off a familiar feeling is that of Mittens. She feels much like a mix of Woody and Jessie (also from Toy Story) in the sense that she has the tragic back story and also serves to remind our hero that he isn't who he thinks he is.

Also. The three pigeons in New York are almost an interesting nod towards the Good Pigeons from Animaniacs.

With all this being said, I really did enjoy the film. Yes there were bits and pieces I didn't overly care for, but that's pretty normal for a lot of films. One thing I really liked was the character of Mittens, and I also enjoyed Rhino from time to time. These two 'sidekick' characters are a large improvement over the sidekicks that we will soon be coming across.

3/5