Maybe there needs to be a name for the genre wherein the protagonist thinks their TV show is real life. I watched another one of those last night, 2008's Bolt, a Disney animated film that drew many comparisons to The Truman Show. I'd say it's closer to Toy Story, though. It's an improvement, in any case, on the preceding three Disney films, but still nowhere close to even a lesser film from the Renaissance. It's a bit less ironic than Chicken Little or Meet the Robinsons, less pathetically trying to imitate Family Guy, and improvements to the cgi technology help enormously. It actually has some heart, though it pumps a bit too weakly to overcome the cholesterol of muddled writing.
Bolt (John Travolta) is a little white dog who thinks he's a superhero. Actually, unbeknownst to him, he's the star of a TV show on which viewers can see him rescue Penny (Miley Cyrus) every week.
The success of the show is purportedly based on the fact that Bolt believes everything is real. Camera crews are kept out of sight and Bolt is carried into his trailer in a dog carrier. How does a dog not notice a camera crew behind some cardboard foliage? Why doesn't he smell or hear them? How doesn't he realise all the story locations are on sound stages in close proximity?
Here we come to an existential question. What should I question about the reality presented and what shouldn't I? I feel like I'd be told I'm an obnoxious knit-picker. On the other hand, isn't the point of stories like The Truman Show to pay attention to the details, especially the details you're not supposed to notice? Sadly, Bolt lacks the clarity of The Truman Show when it comes to its intentions.
In the film's climax, Bolt is able to hear someone screaming for help because he's a dog and his hearing is sensitive enough to hear over a great distance and inside a burning building. So the film asks you to ignore something and then builds plot on that same thing. And I'm well aware a little kid could care less (no, young pedants, it's could care less not couldn't care less. It's not the literal meaning of the words, it's how they scan). But it kinds of sucks to grow up and find the movies or TV shows you like don't hold up because of lazy writing (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, for example).
This also may be the ongoing curse of postmodernism in Disney that began with 101 Dalmations. Just as animators no longer felt the responsibility to finish their drawings, so you could enjoy their rough draft appeal, maybe the writers of a movie like Bolt figure we'll all enjoy the rough draft quality of a screenplay.
But it's not a rough draft, far from it. The original cut of the film was directed by Chris Sanders, co-director of Lilo and Stitch. After producers didn't like two screenings, Sanders was fired and Chris Williams and Byron Howard were brought in. This may explain why we have one scene in which Mittens (Susie Essman) extols the wonders of normal domestic bliss to Bolt followed by another scene in which Mittens condemns human families as invariably vicious frauds, worth no cat or dog's time. Things happen from scene to scene to keep things on target for artificial story requirements regardless of whether they flow naturally from previous scenes.
Bolt slowly discovering he's not a superhero is at the heart of the film, a heart, to be sure, transplanted from Buzz Lightyear. Toy Story had more consistent story logic, though, and that movie has a reputation for inconsistent logic.
All this makes the point of Bolt especially murky. There's a strange condemnation of show business--it's presented as something Bolt and Penny need to escape for an average life in middle America somewhere. Pinocchio also has an implicit condemnation of show business but in Bolt the problem isn't that filmmakers are encouraging a life of indulgence in cheap pleasures, but that they're asking Bolt to participate in pretending. Certainly that's a strange moral for any work of fiction to present. I can't believe anyone who made the film really believed it which is likely why it feels so half-assed.
But the movie's certainly easier on the eyes than Disney's previous cgi efforts. And at least it shows an awareness that it's necessary for a Disney film to have a heart.
Bolt is available on Disney+.
...
This is part of a series of posts I'm writing on the Disney animated canon.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Pinocchio
Fantasia
Dumbo
Bambi
Saludos Amigos
The Three Caballeros
Make Mine Music
Fun and Fancy Free
Melody Time
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
Cinderella
Alice in Wonderland
Peter Pan
Lady and the Tramp
Sleeping Beauty
101 Dalmatians
The Sword in the Stone
The Jungle Book
The Aristocats
Robin Hood
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
The Rescuers
The Fox and the Hound
The Black Cauldron
The Great Mouse Detective
Oliver & Company
The Little Mermaid
The Rescuers Down Under
Beauty and the Beast
Aladdin
The Lion King
Pocahontas
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hercules
Mulan
Tarzan
Fantasia 2000
Dinosaur
The Emperor's New Groove
Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Lilo and Stitch
Treasure Planet
Brother Bear
Home on the Range
Chicken Little
Meet the Robinsons
No comments:
Post a Comment