So Disney's new animated flick Bolt opens next week. Tonight A.O. Scott's review just came up on the New York Times website (it's technically dated tomorrow.)

He liked it.

Phew.

One of his lines really struck me, "What keeps 'Bolt' fresh is an unaffected exuberance, a genuine sense of fun, that is expressed above all through obsessive attention to craft."

See, Bolt was directed and co-written by one of my friends at Disney, Chris Williams. And I think "unaffected exuberance" and "a genuine sense of fun" are two phrases that fit him perfectly.

(Chris also came up with the story for The Emperor's New Groove, which is pretty exuberant and fun, too).

I'm glad to see some of Chris' personality made it into the movie.

Oddly, even though I left Disney four-and-a-half years ago, this is the first movie to come out that I never saw in production. Heck, I even got credit on Meet the Robinsons which came out last year, and by then I'd been in Dubai for eight months!

But Bolt is all-new to me.

And that's part of the reason that I'm so excited to see it. A bunch of my friends have been working on this thing for years, and I finally get to see what they've worked so hard at.

That's why I really liked the end of that quote - the call-out to animation being a craft. These writers, artists and managers are craftspeople. Disney's magical pixie dust is just a marketing ploy. The inside of the animation building has no magic - other than the people.

True, sometimes it can be tough to separate the actual movie from the riff-raff surrounding it - the toys, the fast food kids' meals, the theme park attractions, the spin-off direct-to-video sequels, etc. Scott (jokingly?) calls this machinery the "Disney-Pixar industrial complex".

Thus it's nice to remember the people who spend three or four years of their lives working on a cartoon movie.

So when you go see Bolt in the theater, watch all of the credits. Sure, it'll take six or seven minutes. And true, my name won't be there. But maybe it'll help you gain an appreciation of the craftspeople behind the funny talking animals you just watched for the last 75 minutes.