Bolt and JCVD: Star Stuck Two films take a smirking glimpse into the limitations of fame.

When an action star has to whip out the old don’t-you-know-who-I-am? while dealing with a clueless public, it can be humbling—particularly when the public doesn’t care about your status as much as sniffing your butt. That’s not even the greatest humiliation suffered by the title dog of Bolt, Disney’s latest animated comedy, on the day he’s thrust into the everyday world. Bolt, an adorable white German Shepherd, is the superpower-fueled star of a television series whose producers take great trouble to get the most honest performance out of their moneymaking pooch. That means never letting Bolt know that he’s merely an actor and not, say, Underdog. Something as innocuous as a boom mic could spell disaster, easily scrubbed off a shot but potentially shattering the show’s Method madness.

Even when Bolt’s co-star and “person,” Penny (Miley Cyrus), wants to take the dog she adopted as a puppy home for the weekend, she gets a sugarcoated but firm “no” from her obsessive agent (Greg Germann). Penny leaves anyway, and Bolt (John Travolta) is convinced she’s been kidnapped, a la their drama’s clichéd damsel-in-distress rescue plots. And so the loyal dog escapes his Hollywood trailer to find her, accidentally ending up in a crate headed to New York. No problem, he thinks. He’ll just keep busting doors, bending steel, and using his “superbark” to obliterate whatever gets in his way. But then he falls. And gets stuck. And some wisecracking pigeons laugh at him, never quite remembering why Bolt looks familiar but playing along with his illusion, sending him off to meet a bossy alley cat named Mittens (Susie Essman) when Bolt speaks of an evil kitty.

Directors Byron Howard and Chris Williams make their debut here, with Williams also receiving his first full screenplay credit for co-writing the script with Cars writer Dan Fogelman. Considering all these freshmen contributions, Disney’s holiday tentpole is nonetheless an engaging, solid effort. (It’s also the first time the studio has shot a film in 3-D instead of adding post-production effects; this review is of the 2-D version.)

The animation—certainly the backgrounds, if not the characters themselves—is often photorealistic, particularly a jaw-dropping scan of the Las Vegas strip. Though there’s a lot of inside-Hollywood humor (the East Side pigeons say things like “re-donk-ulous,” while their California counterparts talk scripts and personal assistants), most of the dialogue is funny without assaulting parents with pop-culture references or resorting to cheap laughs for the kiddies. Even the movie’s potential uh-oh character, a ball-enclosed, TV-obsessed hamster named Rhino (Mark Walton), isn’t as broad or obnoxious as you’d expect. Rhino, who joins Bolt and Mittens as they head West to find Penny, may be a little overcaffeinated, but his perpetual spouting of action-movie lingo and casual threats (when Bolt warns of a guard at an animal shelter, Rhino says, “I’ll snap his neck”) earns some of the movie’s biggest laughs.

Bolt’s primary fault? That it’s being released the same year as WALL•E. Regardless of a high passing grade, it would have taken the kind of superheroics that Bolt eventually realizes he isn’t capable of to match the mastery of this summer’s Pixar film. Comparisons will be inevitable—and not in Disney’s favor. Bolt does share one of WALL•E’s best qualities, however: a warmth that’s genuine instead of cheeseball, something not easily found at the multiplex regardless of genre. In addition to the lead doggie’s all-around cuddliness—try to stifle an “awww” when he scratches his neck after flipping a semi—the story emphasizes not only the bond between people and pets but sends a pro-adoption (and anti-abandonment) message so strong you expect Sarah McLachlan to make a cameo. Humanizing a machine is an impressive achievement, but moving viewers to well up over their furry friends is a good one, too.

Action stars usually have the opposite of Bolt’s problem: Fawning fans can have a difficult time separating the actor from his characters, and the celebrity exhausts himself trying to live a normal life with all its real-world baggage. Jean-Claude Van Damme takes a weird though not unsatisfying step toward addressing this issue in JCVD, writer-director Mabrouk El Mechri’s fictionalization of Van Damme’s current lot as a semi-washed-up movie hero.

JCVD is conceptually similar to the recently released My Name Is Bruce, in which Bruce Campbell plays himself as…a semi-washed-up movie hero. But whereas Campbell hams up his direct-to-video status, Van Damme’s portrait is more melancholy than mocking. It’s not entirely without self-deprecation: JCVD opens with a movie-within-a-movie, a long tracking shot following Van Damme as he films his latest bit of roundhouse-kicking dreck, his Brussels muscles on full display. The punches are miles from connecting, and a set wall falls down; when Van Damme approaches his director with concerns, the boss remarks to his assistant, “He still thinks we’re making Citizen Kane?”

Bad projects aren’t Van Damme’s biggest worry, however. He’s also losing a custody battle for his daughter in the States, with his ex’s lawyer using the star’s violent repertoire in his argument: “How does this actor play death? Let me count the ways!” the attorney (John Flanders) bleats, then throws down DVD after DVD as he describes each film’s slayings. “Can I go to the bathroom?” Van Damme asks the judge, once it’s clear that the litany won’t be ending soon.

Van Damme returns to his hometown in Belgium for some relief from his Hollywood woes. But another problem, a bounced check to his lawyer, leads him into another mess when he goes to a bank and finds himself in the middle of a robbery. And when the cops see their hometown celeb’s face in the window, their conclusion is, naturally, that he’s instigating the holdup. Fans surround the building in support regardless: “Jean-Claude! Jean-Claude!” they cry, eager for a glimpse.

El Mechri does a little time-shifting to show scenes from one perspective and later replay them from another, a neat way to pique and then satisfy your puzzlement instead of committing you to a singular view. Of course, Van Damme isn’t the criminal here, but he does help the bad guys (most entertainingly by suggesting common movie ploys) in an effort to play the hero for real. In the meantime, other hostages ask him to perform karate moves; at one point, the film backs up to show his cab ride to the bank, the female driver assaulting him with conversation and accusing him of being rude when he tells her he’s really tired. Everyone around Van Damme looks at him and sees a god. The camera, however, shows the truth: He’s depressed, broke, hasn’t slept in two days, and can’t see a way out of his expired lifestyle.

An extended monologue during which the actor is elevated above the robbery and speaks directly to the camera will likely make or break the film for you: Van Damme, “wasted mentally and physically,” goes on about essentially being a pawn in the Hollywood system, constantly screwed by the media and stripped of the respect he earned in dojo as a karate master. It’s indulgent, certainly, and brilliant, occasionally. The speech is an especially odd moment in a generally odd project—the balance of pathos and humor never seems quite right, and the end is as puzzling as any of the rest. But it’s a remarkable Van Damme performance, and perhaps the first one you won’t forget the minute you leave the theater.