Big Hero Six review

            “Big Hero Six” is the perfect example of a post-modern, post-comic-con style of movie that casts its net wide enough to pull in fans of Pixar's emotional whimsy, tech-heavy Japanese anime and fast-paced, Marvel-esque, action set-pieces.  This makes  a lot of sense, seeing as this film is based on a Marvel comic property, of which Disney now owns the vast majority, and produced by Pixar brain-child John Lasseter—admitted fan and enthusiast of anime legend Hayao Miyazaki. But somewhere in this rowdy pastiche there’s still a focused and poignant coming of age story that grounds the referential spectacle, even when the film seems to be at odds with its more sophisticated leanings.
           We're introduced to the future utopia of Sanfransokyo (a literal cultural melding of east and west) through the lead character Hiro (voiced by Ryan Potter), as he wins big money at underground robot battles, of which his older, more collegiate brother Tadashi (Daniel Henney) disapproves. Later, after an exciting tour of his brother’s robotics school, where he meets a like-minded team of four other young inventors, he decides that his best work shouldn’t be displayed in street-level sport. Despite his young age, he applies to join the program by demonstrating his swarm of interlocking mini-bots at a competitive conference, but just after he wins the competition and accepts his admittance at the school, his future goes up in flames when his brother and the college’s lead technician are killed in a terrible explosion. Hiro is then left to mourn his brother through his last invention; an inflatable, non-lethal nursing bot named Baymax (Scott Adsit), who’s determined to lower the child’s stress-level however he can, even if that means helping Hiro and the other students find the masked murderer, who’s now using the mini-bots for wrong-doing.
           What elevates this film past the usual 3D animated fare is the familial warmth for all of these characters injected into the script and the specificity expressed in the world-building. The central relationship between Hiro and the bouncy, Michelin-Man looking Baymax is both funny as the literal-minded robot consistently misunderstands his frustrated, revenge-driven child owner, and overcast with a cloud of melancholy as the story repeatedly draws us back to the themes of personal loss and misdirected grievance. Before the point in which this movie even begins, Hiro and his older brother are established as orphans, raised by their kooky aunt (Maya Rudolf), who runs a street-side bakery to support the two of them. Baymax, though funny in his childlike reaction to new phenomena, is ultimately acting as an emotional Band-Aid for the protagonist and seeks to heal his pain through adventure. Pretty heavy stuff for kids movie, but not unlike the depths Disney or Pixar have previously explored. Where the movie suffers, however, is in its pandering to the blockbuster aesthetic.
           Once Hiro and his friends discover the whereabouts of the movie’s villain the tone shifts dramatically into action-figure ready, comic book popcorn fodder. Whether cleverly commenting on the banality of Marvel’s third-act, superhero destruction-quota, or simply falling prey to it, when the team suddenly builds robotic super-suits that give them all different powers and a large chunk of the movie’s second half is devoted to sequences of flying in between buildings and falling debris, I wondered how much of this was to advance the un-traditional buddy movie so well established in the first act and how much of it is only to serve the dynamic 3D animation. Nevertheless, at its best, “Big Hero Six” is a wonderfully imaginative and tender science-fiction parable and even when it is driving in autopilot, it’s impressively crafted, interesting to look at, and never boring.

Grade: B+

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Nov-2014