Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars
Bottom Line: A fun kids movie. Cute and inventive. Some humor for the adults, but not much. Disney’s attempt to be Pixar.
The good news is that you don’t need to see any of “Big Hero 1-5” in order to understand the story of “Big Hero 6”. That’s a joke. I know that there weren’t five other prequels to this movie. It does raise the question of what they would call a sequel to this movie, though.
“Big Hero 6” is very loosely based on a Marvel comic series of the same name. This version follows a bunch of nerds who develop really awesome science projects. They then go on to incorporate those science projects into super hero costumes. If you want any further proof that nerdism has gone mainstream, look no further. The devices used are mostly really clever with a little silly thrown in. As an added plus, the team is also very diverse.
There is a lot of stuff here for kids to enjoy. It’s maybe a little too cutesy at times for the adults and the “lesson” is kind of blah, but all in all, what we have here is an all around well put together movie that adults can tolerate, if not enjoy, and kids will really like. The animation is crisp and unique. Baymax, the cute rubbery robot, plays very well as a comic foil. Besides Hiro, the teenage genius, the other characters don’t get as much fleshing out, but there’s enough to feel for them. The villain is kind of one-dimensional and not terribly believable, but this is a kids movie.
Disney really tried to copy the winning Pixar formula here and fell a little short. The animation is similar and they even have John Lasseter of “Toy Story” fame producing it. There was even the ubiquitous short animation film before the main movie that Pixar pioneered. That leads me to wonder why they didn’t just hand the movie over to Pixar completely since they own them. I guess Disney wants to show that its animation studio can produce CG movies as good as Pixar can.
If you like kids movies, you’ll probably enjoy this one. I found it a fun time even though the pacing was strange at times. There’s no real need to see it in the theater if you have a decent home television, but if you don’t crisp animation is always worth going to the theater for.