So this is a new one for us, a Disney film from the dark times, before Princess and the Frog.
‘course, that’s misleading, because really this is the first film that lead them out of the wilderness- the first after John Lasseter took the helm at Disney Animation Studios. And some of that influence can be felt just in the premise, because there’s something quintessentially Pixar about an animal movie built around the lead thinking he’s a super hero because he’s on TV. It just feels like how they’d put the twist in the “pet walks through hell to get home after being carted across the country” story.
I think of films like that, where you have one big gimmick to polish a classic story, as having two dimensions you can grade it on: does the gimmick change the story in such a way as to make it seem completely unlike the classic story, or is the execution of the story fundamentals good enough to let it stand up on its own regardless of the gimmick.
So the gimmick is certainly very present, but not really in a transformative way. They try to use it to add extra punch to the reunion by giving us a fakeout of Bolt being replaced, and it’s the main source of humor in most of the flick. But they almost seem to want to get those funny bits out of the way so they can instead step away from the gimmick and instead mix the classic form of the story with a roadtrip.
We’ll come back to the ending though.
Fundamentals… well, I had a phrase get stuck in my head, and despite not being very good y’all are stuck with it now too: Median non Descript. I know, it’s terrible, but y’know what, the McAveragesons have gotten enough attention. But there’s just something entirely middle of the road about it. You can immediately peg the age of the movie from the animation quality, but they do an adequate job of giving personality to the animal characters so it doesn’t stand out too badly. There’s a fair amount of non-acting going on here, but for Travolta at least that kinda works because not-quite-monotone fits Bolt as a character. And no one else really has enough going on for it to impact much. The cute dog scenes are sufficiently cute, the reveals of deep personal trauma are predictable but placed well, the dumb sidekick is just barely effective enough to not get too annoying. Etcetera.
Rather torn on the ending though. Well, let’s step back. The entire sequence from the big heartbreak fakeout to the credits is a bizarre mix. The actual fakeout is just one of those giant predictable things that are utterly annoying because watching characters get twisted up over obvious misunderstandings that’d be resolved by talking for 30 seconds is just not fun to me. But then it sets up the rescue sequence, which pays off the opening (which honestly the opening bit of going through an episode of Bolt is the best part of the whole movie) and has fairly good emotional beats. Then the ending is just… the tritest thing, I mean of course that’s how the movie ends right? So I suppose it ends on the same basic note it kept hitting through the majority of the film doesn’t it.
Although actually I guess even the fire escape sequence touches on just a weird thing in the movie. Like, they set up the whole “Bolt thinks it’s real” thing in a weird Truman Show fashion, which is fine, except they linger just long enough on how goddamned traumatized the poor dog is, then immediately play it off as just “oh he just needs the Regular Life, it’ll be fine”. Seriously, that first scene in Bolt’s trailer where he sits there staring at the door in an unbreakable state of hyper-vigilance? I’m pretty sure that’s the clearest sign of PTSD. But obviously a week in the heartland will clear the right up. It’s almost too bad because there’s plenty of other scenes that suggest Bolt is just kinda wired weird and is kinda fearless by nature, it’s sorta the point of the very first scene- Bolt isn’t quite like these other puppies, he stays focused on what interests him. But that specific scene… yikes.
I don’t really think that hits me too hard on the final gutcheck entertainment rating, but… yikes.
Rating- 6/10
No comments:
Post a Comment