BOLT FROM THE BLUE

Hands up who owned a View-Master 3D viewer as a kid? That bright red device with a trigger on the side into which you popped View-Master discs (three reels of seven views) that were your personal enchanted windows onto worlds of three-dimensional wonders...

I never bothered with the geographical or natural history sets (except for the ones about Disneyland and dinosaurs!) but I had every one of the Disney film sets which were, for the most part, scenes from the animated features recreated as models and then photographed in 3D.

I found myself thinking about these childhood treasures for the first time in years this week when I saw a preview of Bolt, the new Disney feature film being shown in selected venues in 3D.

Bolt is a digitally animated film and the 3D is superb. There are hardly any of the predictable poke-your-eye-out effects (which is probably just as well since most people won't see the film in 3D) but, instead, it is used to create an immersive experience that takes you right into an environment in a way that I can really only describe as being like an animated View-Master...

Click on images to enlarge

There's a whole generation now that has grown up watching the Shrek, Ice Age and Madagascar franchises that have no concept of animation as being anything other than a CGI-created medium and it's probably only because I still hanker after the old days of hand-drawn animation that I have persistent reservations about digital animation - in particular the often uncomfortable fit of cartoony, plastic people inhabiting a super-photo realistic world.

Anyway, to the story...

Bolt is the tale of a dog (familiar Disney territory when one remembers Lady and the Tramp, 101 Dalmatians and Oliver & Co) but Bolt is nor ordinary dog. Bolt is remarkable Rin Tin Tin-type mutt with the powers of a comic book superhero.

We discover Bolt's exceptional talents from the film's turbo-charged, roller coaster of an opening sequence in which he and his human, Penny, attempt to rescue Penny's father from the clutches of Dr Calico, an evil, cat-loving, cat-eyed scientist with a penchant for world-domination.


This, however, is not the whole picture: the truth is that Bolt (superbly voiced by John Travolta) is the eponymous star of TV programme who - rather like the hero of The Truman Show - is unaware of the fact that his adventures are being filmed. And he certainly doesn't know that his supposed super-powers are actually nothing more than craftily-timed special effects.

When, through a series of mishaps, Bolt is accidentally shipped from Hollywood to New York and finds himself on the lose in the Big Apple, he is on a collision course with reality. Hooking up with a jaded alley cat called Mittens (whom he believes to be one of Dr Calico's cohorts), Bolt sets out to cross the States from East Coast to West Coast to find Penny.


At 103 minutes, it's a long journey (the one thing today's animators haven't learned from the forebears is an understanding of the brevity of wit!) but it's got any number of dramatic and comedic high spots - especially once Bolt and Mittens are joined by an overweight hamster called Rhino who is a TV addict and Bolt's number one fan. It's an engaging twist in the tail that as Bolt reluctantly comes to realise that he doesn't have any of the powers he thought he had, he meets a character who believes totally in the Bolt legend.


Bolt is securely at home in the Disney tradition of strong story and characterisations with cute animals and a touch of sentiment; and yet, after the screening, my critic colleagues were asking one another, in a somewhat puzzled manner, whether the film was a Disney or a Pixar picture. Their confusion was understandable: the opening credits feature both the Pixar and Disney logos and film's Executive Producer is Pixar's John (Toy Story) Lasseter.

Back in 1983, Lasseter was a lowly animator at the Mouse Factory (working on Mickey's Christmas Carol) but, whilst he was to lose that job, he was destined for greater things. A year later, he had made his first computer animated short at LucasFilms and the next thing we all knew he emerged as the founding genius behind Pixar and was turning out brilliant short films that led to the feature-length Toy Story and its successors Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc, The Incredibles, Cars and WALL.E.

Repeatedly, John Lasseter (right with a larger-than-life Bolt) was being referred to as 'the new Walt Disney' and sure enough when, in 2006, Disney bought Pixar, he became Chief Creative Officer not just of Pixar but also of the Walt Disney Animation studio.

So, the tyro who'd been sacked from Disney was now back as the man who calls the shots on the future of Disney animated films.

As a result - despite the fact that Bolt carries a Walt Disney Animation Studio title card featuring Mickey Mouse in his 1928 Disney debut, Steamboat Willie - the film has the feel and sensibility of a Pixar film: the setting, unlike most Disney fairy-tale/fantasy classics, is today's world (and specifically America), there is a witty, lightly ironic and occasionally self-referential script, the ubiquitous (and forgettable) voice-over song half-way through - though not, on this occasion, by Randy Newman - and the plot, when you boil it down, is essentially Toy Story with dogs and cats.


All this has to be due to the Lasseter influence, but whilst it is good to see a first-rate Disney animated film, the fact that Disney animators have succeeded in creating a digitally animated film in the Pixar style is, in itself, no guarantee that we are about to experience a renaissance of Disney animation.

As I watched the two-dimensionally animated end-titles (in, bizarrely, 3D) I couldn't help thinking that the proof that Lasseter has succeeded in changing the fortunes of the greatest studio in the history of animation will only be confirmed when we see the release of next year's traditionally, 2D animated fairy-story, The Princess and the Frog.

Until then, whatever its parentage, Bolt is well worth seeing - especially if you can get to view it in 3D - and it's by far the best animated feature of the year, which is why it's been nominated for an Oscar. Of course, everyone expects WALL.E to take the Academy Award, but if only Bolt could beat the system and run off with the golden man then it could only enhance his Superdog status!