Review: Big Hero 6
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Disney's first foray into the Marvel universe is the closest they've gotten to recapturing the speed and spirit of The Incredibles, and that's both a compliment and a curse.
City Paper grade: B
Disney's first kiddified foray into the Marvel universe is the closest they've gotten to recapturing the speed and spirit of 2004's The Incredibles, and that's both a compliment and a curse. Though it's built around the power-team template pioneered by Stan Lee (yes, he has his cameo), Big Hero 6 starts squarely on one do-gooder: boy genius Hiro (Ryan Potter), who makes his bones building combat robots in the tech-bloated megacity of San Fransokyo. After his older brother Tadashi (Daniel Henney) encourages him to enroll at his university, Hiro begins developing his own projects, befriending Baymax (Scott Adsit), a glitchy, roly-poly inflato-bot of Tadashi's creation. One of those sweet, silly characters designed to put a branded lunchbox in every branded backpack, Baymax is easily the most marketable member of the cast, but the writing crew, made up of Cars and Monsters Inc. alums, also moves to harp on the virtues of teamwork. In combining their skills to expose a kabuki-masked villain, they come close to nailing the earnest charm that made The Incredibles so incredible, sometimes hewing too close to the model to ignore. It deviates from that course in the form of arresting visuals — lots of surface, but that doesn't make it superficial.
