The Travolta/Cage Project #85 Bolt (2008)
The Travolta/Cage Project is an ambitious, years-long multi-media exploration of the fascinating, overlapping legacies of Face/Off stars John Travolta and Nicolas Cage with two components: this online column exploring the actor’s complete filmographies in chronological order and the Travolta/Cage podcast, where Clint Worthington, myself and a series of fascinating guests discuss the movies I write about here.
Read previous entries in the column here, listen to the podcast here, pledge to the Travolta/Cage Patreon at this blessed web address and finally follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/travoltacage
I’d like to believe that John Travolta will have another comeback, that he’ll win back the moviegoing public’s love the way he did with Look Who’s Talking and Pulp Fiction. But if he does not, then it looks like 2007 and 2008 will be his final years as a top box-office attraction.
Travolta scored three solid hits in two years in 2007’s Wild Hogs and Hairspray and the 2008 Disney animated show-business satire Bolt and while some of his subsequent films have done okay at the box-office, it wouldn’t be long until his vehicles started skipping theaters altogether.
The dazzlingly charismatic star of Grease, Saturday Night Fever, Blow Out, Urban Cowboy, Pulp Fiction, Get Shorty and Face/Off would soon be reduced to starring in culturally invisible direct-to-streaming stinkers that, quite honestly, feel made-up.
I’m professionally obligated to see The Forger, Life on the Line, Criminal Activities, Killing Season, In a Valley of Violence, I Am Wrath, Speed Kills and The Poison Rose. Yet I’m still not convinced that these films actually exist.
And the crazy part is that I’ve actually seen a number of those movies! Hell, The Poison Rose helped inspire this column and the Travolta/Cage podcast! I was so morbidly fascinated by it, and The Fanatic, that it made me want to see all of the obscure, weird, seemingly imaginary movies in Travolta’s spectacularly checkered filmography.
When Travolta’s movies did make an impact in the years ahead, it was inevitably for the worst possible reasons. Gotti and The Fanatic both went viral and garnered lots of headlines, but they invariably centered on how unspeakably awful both films looked and how mind-bogglingly terrible they actually were.
Gotti even made it into my new book, The Joy of Trash, which I will NEVER stop plugging, to the point that I have told my family that I want the words “author of The Joy of Trash, available for purchase, signed, for $18.50, shipping, handling and taxes included from https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop, domestic only" on my tombstone. I know that might seem gauche but I REALLY want people to buy my latest literary endeavor.
But before the VERY bad times Travolta scored a few final hits. Bolt was Travolta’s last out and out critical and commercial hit. It’s not coincidentally also his last out and out comedy, with the exception of Old Dogs, which was such a nightmare that it might have put him off making cinematic comedies permanently. Travolta has a flair for comedy that has gone to waste in the dour likes of grimly titled bloodbaths like Killing Season, Criminal Activities and I Am Wrath but that distinguishes his delightful turn here.
In Bolt, Travolta plays straight man to an aggregation of ringers gifted in the oft-abused art of improvisation as the title character, an adorable dog who has starred in a hit television show about a super-powered pooch alongside his owner Penny, who is voiced as an 8 year old by Chloe Grace Moritz (who would go to play Nicolas Cage’s daughter just a few years later in her breakthrough performance in Kick Ass) and as a thirteen year old by Miley Cyrus.
For the sake of realism, the people behind the show have tricked the poor pup into thinking that he genuinely possesses superpowers, and that the fantastical premise of the hit show is real.
This causes problems for for the cuddly canine when he ends up getting shipped from his home in Los Angeles to New York city. Culture clash comedy ensues when the pure-hearted pup ends up joining forces with Mittens, a cynical, pragmatic cat voiced by Susie Essman and Rhino, a Bolt super-fan hamster voiced by animator and voiceover artist Mark Walton in a scene-stealing turn.
The mismatched trio of anthropomorphic talking animals embark on a cross country journey of friendship and discovery to reunite Bolt with his owner and best friend.
Like the protagonist of The Truman Show, Bolt has lived his entire life in a fictional construct that he does not realizes is merely show-business make-believe. There’s a philosophical dimension to Bolt’s plight but this is a children’s film about an adorable animal who thinks he’s a superhero so it’s handled with a light touch.
When there’s a lot of obvious improvisation in a kid’s film it often reeks of desperation. All too often it feels like comedians, improvisers and other funny people are brought in to save a dire script, to bring the funny to a brutally, painfully unfunny screenplay.
That thankfully is not the case here. The screenplay for Bolt is genuinely clever but it benefits from inspired ad-libbing among pros unafraid to go off-book.
When kid’s films try to appeal simultaneously to small children and cynical adults they often end up pleasing neither demographic. Bolt is the exception that proves the rule. It has everything children love: cute animals, superheroes, friendship and of course plenty of sly show-business satire involving cynical agents and cold-hearted executives. Greg Germann is a hoot as Penny’s agent, a black-hearted opportunist who will do anything and everything to ensure that the show stays on the air and the money keeps rolling in.
Bolt makes inspired use of the puppyish innocence and sweetness at the core of Travolta’s persona, to the sense that he is a fundamentally nice man who means well despite some of his more unfortunate associations (Scientology, cough, cough). Travolta may not get the best lines here but he proves a deft comic foil to the funny men and women in supporting roles.
The film was released just a year after Cage’s eminently forgettable turn in The Ant Bully but the animation is Disney slick and Disney professional instead of creepy and jarring. In an unsurprising turn of events, dogs and cats make for more appealing heroes, visually and story-wise, than nearly identical insects.
Bolt is a solidly constructed piece of family entertainment. It’s a good movie and a funny movie and a sweet movie but more than anything, it is a nice movie, just like Hairspray. It deserved its critical and commercial success, as well as its Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Film.
I don’t want to oversell Bolt. It’s an appealing movie but a slight one. Travolta’s late-period filmography should be filled with modest winners like this. Instead it stands out as an anomaly in a group of films that are for the most part appallingly bad, completely forgettable or an unfortunate combination of the two.
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