Film / Reviews
Big Hero 6
Big Hero 6 (PG)
USA 2014 108 mins Dir: Don Hall, Chris Williams Starring (voices): Scott Adsit, Ryan Potter, Daniel Henney, T.J. Miller, Jamie Chung, Damon Wayans Jr., Genesis Rodriguez, James Cromwell, Alan Tudyk, Maya Rudolph
Having paid an eye-watering sum to acquire Marvel comics, lock, stock and barrel, uncle Walt Disney seeks a further return on his investment with this first Disney/Marvel feature animation. Adapted from a series so obscure that even Comic Book Guys may struggle to recall it, Big Hero 6 is set in the futuristic architectural mash-up that is San Fransokyo, where, for reasons that are never explained, very few inhabitants look remotely Asian.
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Here we find 14-year-old robotics prodigy and general tearaway Hiro (Potter) being mentored by his older brother Tadashi (Henney) in the absence of their deceased parents. At Tadashi’s ‘Nerd Lab’, Hiro meets the rest of the colourful, idiosyncratic gang – GoGo (Chung), Wasabi (Wayans Jr.), Honey Lemon (Rodriguez) and token PG-rated stoner dude Fred (Miller). He then gains admission to their ranks by sharing his tiddly, versatile ‘microbots’, which form themselves into shape-shifting swarms. When Tadashi is killed in a mysterious fire, our hero Hiro seeks solace in the squishy robotic arms of Baymax (Adsit), the cute ‘personal healthcare companion’ his brother designed for him. Until, that is, he discovers that Tadashi’s death was no accident and vows revenge, transforming Baymax into an unlikely armoured avenger to help vanquish a mysterious bad guy in a Kabuki mask.
The plotting gets a big Scooby Doo in places, with multiple bereavement and loss piled on perhaps rather cynically to add emotional heft. But the chief pleasure of Big Hero 6 is in its moving and funny kid-robot bonding sequences. Lumbering, solicitous, huggable Baymax, who resembles a smaller and less menacing version of the Stay Puft marshmallow man from Ghostbusters, is something of a merchandiser’s dream. He’s also perfectly voiced by Scott Adsit, exclaiming “Oh no!” in reassuringly neutral tones at moments of maximum peril and acting amusingly drunk when his battery starts to run low. It’s all rather noisy by Disney standards, but the animation is lovely and crisp, with the cut’n’shut architecture of San Fransokyo carrying a hint of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Encouragingly, the film also acts as something of a cheerleader for science at a time when those who adhere to bizarre supernatural belief systems are grabbing all the headlines. Or, as Fred puts it: “Science – yeah!”
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