Movie Review: “Bolt”

“Bolt”

Rating: 64 

Disney’s “Bolt” is the studio’s best non-Pixar computer-generated cartoon to date, a shaggy-dog tale that owes as much to “The Truman Show” as it does to “Lassie Come Home.” Young kids might not get the film’s meta layers, but characters are funny and cuddly enough that they just might not care.

As it opens, Bolt (voiced by John Travolta) is a puppy getting picked out of a pet shop by Penny (Miley Cyrus), and then it skips forward five years. At this point, Bolt is a superhero dog with heat vision, a nuclear bark and the strength to drop cars from high bridges, saving Penny from peril at every turn.

But none of it is real: Bolt and Penny are the stars of a slam-bang TV action series, but Bolt is blissfully unaware that life is a stage. A few clever accidents later, Bolt learns that the real world is less easy to conquer as he travels cross-country with smart-mouthed alley cat Mittens (Susie Essman of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” who fans of that great show will swear is going to break into rancid profanity at any time, but keeps it clean nevertheless) and a star-struck hamster in a Wayne Coyne-style plastic ball.