Big Hero 6
Directed by: Don Hall & Chris Williams
Written by: Don Hall & Jordan Roberts (story) - Robert L. Baird & Daniel Gerson and Jordan Roberts (screenplay) - Based on the comic by Duncan Rousseau & Steven T. Seagle
Voices by: Ryan Potter, Scott Adsit, Jamie Chung, T.J. Miller, Genesis Rodriguez, Damon Wayans Jr., Maya Rudolph, James Cromwell, Alan Tudyk
Animation/Action/Comedy/Family/Sci-Fi - 108 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 3 Nov 2014
Written by: Don Hall & Jordan Roberts (story) - Robert L. Baird & Daniel Gerson and Jordan Roberts (screenplay) - Based on the comic by Duncan Rousseau & Steven T. Seagle
Voices by: Ryan Potter, Scott Adsit, Jamie Chung, T.J. Miller, Genesis Rodriguez, Damon Wayans Jr., Maya Rudolph, James Cromwell, Alan Tudyk
Animation/Action/Comedy/Family/Sci-Fi - 108 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 3 Nov 2014
The folks behind Big Hero 6 are pulling the wool over your eyes. They want you to think this is all new. Here are new superheroes you’ve never seen before, here is the mash-up megalopolis called San Fransokyo you’ve never seen before, and here is this giant, inflatable, vinyl home health care worker robot with a microchip of gold ready to cure all that ails you, both physical and emotional. Big Hero 6 is actually a by the number Scooby-Doo formula cartoon. An exclamation of, “Why it’s Old Man Withers from the abandoned carnival!” would not be out of place here. He would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for these meddling kids. Big Hero 6 is aesthetically pleasing, especially out in the city, but this lesser known Marvel comic lacks a story to match the view.
Aimed at the little ones more than most recent animated features including The LEGO Movie, The Boxtrolls, and The Book of Life, there are not too many jokes only adults will understand. The cheesy one-liners and the gee-whiz superhero gear and costumes are only meant to impress the youngsters. The one-dimensional characters will be right up their alley as well. The simple yet large robot, Baymax (Scott Adsit, 2014's St. Vincent), is just as kid friendly as any other Disney leading character you can think of; he even looks like an overgrown, huggable teddy bear.
Aimed at the little ones more than most recent animated features including The LEGO Movie, The Boxtrolls, and The Book of Life, there are not too many jokes only adults will understand. The cheesy one-liners and the gee-whiz superhero gear and costumes are only meant to impress the youngsters. The one-dimensional characters will be right up their alley as well. The simple yet large robot, Baymax (Scott Adsit, 2014's St. Vincent), is just as kid friendly as any other Disney leading character you can think of; he even looks like an overgrown, huggable teddy bear.
Baymax is 14 year-old Hiro Hamada’s (Ryan Potter) partner after Baymax’s creator and Hiro’s big brother, Tadashi, is killed in a freak fireball explosion at his university’s robotics center. However, even though Hiro is a child genius, graduated high school at 13, and considers groundbreaking robotics as child’s play, the plot’s main story arc requires him to be a blithering idiot at times. Signs that the explosion was the result of foul play and any and all clues relating to the masked villain are unnecessarily drawn out and left a mystery even though some of the 10 year-olds in the audience will wonder how Hiro can be so obtuse. Big Hero 6 is about geniuses and some of the most advanced computers and robots to date, but the story requires the simplest explanations to elude the main characters.
While the dialogue and animation are for the kiddies, there are few more subtle themes lurking just beneath the neon surface. First off, a head scratcher. A character blatantly set up as the bad guy is named Krei, pronounced Cray, and is considered evil because he represents big money corporations who are all about the bottom line and shareholder profit even if he has to cut some corners to make more money. The kids won’t notice but is Disney, one of the largest multinational corporations in the entire world, railing against corporate greed? Also, in real life, Cray is one of the world’s most advanced supercomputer companies. I wonder if they will have an issue being associated with a scheming scoundrel who only exploits pure science for a quick buck.
Culturally, there are a few unexpected pop-ups aside from the city mash-up of San Francisco and Tokyo. First of all, the most physically capable hero out of the Big Hero 6 is a girl and her catchphrase is “Woman Up!” when she wants someone to be brave and ‘man up’. Also, the tepid scaredy cat, aka the Shaggy of the group, is the large black guy with dreadlocks, Wasabi (Damon Wayans Jr.), who in previous decades would be the team’s braun instead of its brains. One good thing about Big Hero 6 is its unexpected role reversals.
Baymax the health care robot reminds me of the health care robot from 2011’s Robot & Frank. They are both all white and speak in very soft, pleasant tones. They move slow and act as a Jiminy Cricket conscience to their hot-headed human owners. Even though Big Hero 6 is the result of a major corporate connection between Disney and Marvel, two brands which have independently launched some of the most successful franchises in film history, this film boils down to an expensive looking Saturday morning cartoon knock-off. The heroes offer nothing knew besides some fancy looking robots and some quirky reversals concerning what the audience expects for female characters and who we have come to expect as the brains behind the operation. I’ll take simple Legos any day of the week over a story as vacuous as Big Hero 6.
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