A fast-paced, well-directed animated feature.

Rating: 10/10 (1 September 2014)

I love "Bolt" because of its story and how it tells it. "Bolt" echoes "The Truman Show" but asks what would happen if Truman secretly escaped. Bolt has been basically lied to his whole life and led to believe he was some kind of messiah sent to protect millions but finds his whole life is a joke for a low-rated television show. Even the event that leads him on his adventure was just a way to get higher ratings. His first interactions with real world are frightening, funny, and cute which is the point. The Director of Bolt's show succeeds in creating a character that would totally embrace the fake world around him, yet he fails to create a character with an identity outside of his fake world.
After Bolt escapes, there's really no villain. There're only unfortunate events. That's another thing that makes Bolt work: there's no one that the viewer can point to and say that's the bad guy. Sure, there are jerks, but no one is really a villain. The viewer can't blame the Director for creating Bolt; after all, the Director just wanted to make the show as believable as possible. He didn't want Bolt to get hurt, yet he wanted perfection. After getting perfection, people got hurt.
The movie isn't about grand villains; it's about figuring out what life is like without grand villains.