#3: BIG HERO SIX

#3: BIG HERO SIX (4/1/15)


Starring the voice talents of: Ryan Potter, Scott Adsit, Daniel Henney, T.J. Miller, Jamie Chung, Damon Wayans Jnr., Génesis Rodríguez, James Cromwell and Maya Rudolph. The amazing animation skills of the Walt Disney animation studio, written by Jordan Roberts, Dan Gerson and Robert L. Baird and directed by Don Hall and Chris Williams. 102 minutes long.

In the near future, two orphans – 14 year-old boy genius Hiro and his elder brother, Tadashi Hamada live with their Aunt in San Fransokyo, Hiro squanders his genius-level talents building battle bots to take part in illegal robot fights while his brother creates, Baymax - a large white inflatable robot doctor - in the genius lab of the nearby Tech University. When Hiro creates an amazing new robotic nanobot gadget of his own to secure a place at Uni with his brother and a gang of fellow genius-level nerds his future looks fantastic! However, Hiro has little time to reap the benefits of his invention before it and his brother, are destroyed in a terrible explosion and Hiro is bereaved again.

But Tadashi's creation comes to the aid of Hiro and in the best emotional section of the movie the robot helps the boy to come to terms with his grief while accidentally helping him to discover the explosion and fire was no accident and there's a mysterious masked super-villain in town using his nanobot technology for his own nefarious purposes.

Recruiting the services of gang of science nerds, Hiro transforms and equipments them into the super-hero team Big Hero Six of the title and off they head to battle the villain. From then on, it's business as usual with action, adventure and excitement galore plus the usual Disney life-lesson about forgiveness, responsibility and the benefits of working together.

Visually speaking, Big Hero Six is simply breath-taking, the street scenes, the detail, the textures, the animation, the design and in fact every aspect other than the story are pure A+, picture-perfect things of wonder. But the story is sadly all too generic, riddled with plot holes and 'what the?' moments and all rather blah-blah. It's like looking at a fantastic Lamborghini and then popping the hood to find a generic, 2 stroke engine inside, which is a great shame because when this film focuses on Hiro coming to terms with his grief thanks to Baymax or hanging out with the techno nerds it soars, but when it's bogged down in the rather complicated and padded plot it's all just becomes a little bit samey and average. And that's a sad because films like How to Train Your Dragon 1 & 2 and The Incredibles  have shown that modern animated adventure films can come up with something be fresh and original in the story dept, what a shame this one didn't.

However, none of that should bother the target audience, particularly the boys who will love this film regardless of the generic story and by-the-numbers plot.

7/10