The film stars the voices of John Travolta, Miley Cyrus, Susie Essman, Mark Walton, Malcolm McDowell, James Lipton and Greg Germann.

The film's plot centers on a dog named Bolt, who has spent his entire life on the set of a television series and firmly believes that he has superpowers.

After a cliffhanger episode causes Bolt to believe Penny has been kidnapped, he escapes from his on-set trailer in Hollywood, but knocks himself unconscious and falls into a box of packing peanuts, which is then shipped to New York City.

Believing that Mittens is an "agent" of Calico, Bolt ties her to his collar with a leash, and forces her to guide him back to Penny.

At the same time, the Bolt look-alike panics during the show's filming and accidentally knocks over lit tiki torches, setting the stage on fire with Penny trapped inside.

Bolt arrives, and the two reunite inside the burning studio, but are unable to escape and Penny begins to suffocate from the smoke.

In November 2002, Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, the directors of Lilo & Stitch (2002), had signed a multi-picture deal with Walt Disney Pictures.

[5] The plot centered on Henry, a famous canine star, who one day finds himself stranded in the Nevada desert with a testy, one-eyed cat and an oversized, radioactive rabbit who are themselves searching for new homes, all the while believing he is still on television.

In the fall of 2006, Lasseter, along with other directors from Pixar and Disney, attended two screenings of the film and gave Sanders suggestive notes on how to improve the story.

[17] The radioactive rabbit and eyepatch-wearing cat characters were removed from the story while the dog Henry (now renamed Bolt) was redesigned into a White Shepherd with a lightning bolt-shaped patch that runs down the left side of his body.

[24] Joe Moshier, lead character designer, said, "they American White Shepherds have really long ears, a trait that I tried to caricature in order to allow the animators to emphasize Bolt's expressiveness.

"[24] The design of Rhino in his plastic ball was based on executive producer John Lasseter's pet chinchilla, which was brought to an animators' retreat during the film's production.

[27] Motörhead's song "Dog-Face Boy" (from their Sacrifice album) is in a scene in which a mailroom worker is listening to it on headphones while inadvertently wrapping Bolt up in a box that gets shipped to New York City.

The website's consensus reads: "Bolt is a pleasant animated comedy that overcomes the story's familiarity with strong visuals and likable characters.

"[43] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 67 out of 100, based on 29 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

[45] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote that Bolt was "a sweet Disney family film, but Lasseter's oversight has made it smarter than it otherwise would have been.

[47] Todd McCarthy, reviewing for Variety, noted the film was an "OK Disney animated entry enhanced by nifty 3-D projection" as it "bears some telltale signs of Pixar's trademark smarts, but still looks like a mutt compared to the younger company's customary purebreds.

"[48] A. O. Scott of The New York Times complimented the film as "a real movie[,] not a great one, perhaps, but a more organic and thought-out piece of work than the usual animated hodgepodge that lures antsy children and their dutiful parents into the multiplexes.

This winning mix of exciting action, heart-tugging sentiment, and gentle character comedy makes Bolt yet another solid addition to Disney's history of family-friendly fare.

"[51] Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune awarded the film 1+1⁄2 stars out of four, writing he personally "felt abandoned just watching it.

It's a seriously withholding action comedy, stingy on the wit, charm, jokes, narrative satisfactions and animals with personalities sharp enough for the big screen, either in 2-D or 3-D.

The movie dog's confusions are entertaining, though they're familiar to anyone who has seen Buzz Lightyear in Pixar's peerless Toy Story films.

But the spunk of the hamster, a corpulent rodent named Rhino, is stirring, and there's a timeless purity to the spectacle of him scurrying around in his private little sphere.