Movie Thoughts: Bolt (2008)

• Released: 21 November 2008
• Directed by: Byron Howard, Chris Williams
• Running time: 1 h 36 min
• Rating 4/5

Synopsis

A dog who believes he has superpowers is separated from his person and now has to travel back to her with the aid of a sarcastic cat and a hyper hamster.

My Thoughts

Major nostalgia vibes for me. This was literally my favorite Disney movie ever for the longest time. My opinions have quite shifted these days, but I still consider Bolt to be a pretty strong film.

The main character's arc is very interesting. We really see Bolt go from thinking he can do anything to being down in the dumps when he realizes he's not a superdog, to finally realizing that he can still be a hero without powers. His bonding with the other characters (particularly Mittens) is also quite neat to see. They literally hate each other's guts for the longest time, but after Bolt's epiphany they genuinely become really close (without the relationship being romantic, thank God). Bolt is even willing to risk his (non-superpowered) hide to save Mittens from a pound. It's just very wholesome. As is his relationship with Penny. You know what they say about how loyal dogs can be.

Honestly, the only major character I really couldn't get into was Rhino. As far as obnoxious Disney comic reliefs go, he's not the worst, but he's still pretty obnoxious from time to time. I don't hate him or anything (like Olaf from Frozen), and he's fine sometimes (e.g. when he gives his heroic speeches), but he's just not my cup of tea and can be a bit too hyper for my taste.

This is also a very good-looking film. While a tiny bit dated nowadays in some of the textures, this is the one of the first three all-CGI Disney movies that holds up the best. Everything from Tangled and onward visual-wise pretty much holds up very well to this day. But for how early in Disney's CGI career it was released, Bolt still looks great. I like the character designs, I like the animation, and there's some really good and intense action scenes in here. Another thing I genuinely really appreciated is that you can tell that some of the backgrounds were hand-painted, which does give the film this very slight traditional-esque touch that would be absent in most later CGI Disney films. It's not obvious, but once you start paying attention to it you can pick up quite a bit of painted backgrounds here and there. And it looks great.

Overall this is just a pretty great film. It's not a perfect 5/5 or anything, but this is the first time I feel Disney has made an overall-solid CGI film. I have watched Bolt many times before, and obviously will watch it many times more in the future (both for nostalgia reasons and it genuinely being a good film).