Big Hero 6 takes the cultural stereotypes of the East and West, smashes them together to a fine powder, and fabricates from it a 100-minute ride that is so eye-poppingly pretty, so gently moving and so explosively inventive that it’s the most unabashed, jolting fun you’ll have at the movies this year. Even after turning out two very strong features like Wreck-it Ralph and Frozen, Disney proves once again that its capability to push boundaries of imagination is strengthening by each passing endeavor.
Disney at its absolute peak
Based on a Marvel comic, directors Don Hall and Chris Williams gather the immense arsenal of talent at Disney to conjure up on screen the beautiful cherry-bomb of a city called San Fransokyo – a hybrid mash-up of the architectural sensibilities and culture of San Francisco and Tokyo. Tadashi inhabits the city and studies at a plush corner of what’s called a ‘nerd’ school – a university of robotics.
His whiz-kid brother, Hiro, graduated high school at 13 but is not so interested in further education. “Go to college like you and hear them tell me something I already know?” he frantically mumbles, when confronted by Tadashi to stop going to bot-fights and put his genius to good use. Enter Baymax, an unforgivably cute squish-me-now robot who was programmed to act as a medical assistant. Voiced with an air of simple hilarity by Scott Adsit, Baymax quickly nestles in the narrative as a carrier of smiles and tears when a tragedy befalls Hiro. With nothing but awesomeness to spare, Big Hero 6 begins to unveil its wings to take flight. And it soars.
I’m Baymax
From the opening frame, the film cleverly offers laughs at the expense of thought: the timeless scientific dilemma of pitting revolutionary tech against the failing human conscience. The social commentary on the good v/s bad use of science is so sneakily slipped into the amusing gags and sporadic heartbreaks, it feels like having tasted a gourmet meal in what was packaged as cotton candy. Never losing sight of the traditional Disney feel-good tropes, Big Hero 6 blends amazingly detailed, spunky-bright animation with bucketfuls of fun.
A rule-freak with laser plasma, a disk-flinging super skater, a millionaire comic geek with a super-jump flame-throwing suit, a chemist with an extra gooey-gun and Hiro team up with an upgraded Baymax to stop the bad guy who stole Hiro’s microbots. Baymax bears the weight of the script’s pointy intelligence ever so adorably on his fluffy shoulders.
The voice casting is perfect: T.J. Miller as the future stoner Fred, Daman Wayans Jr. as Wasabi, Genesis Rodriguez as the chemist Honey Lemon and Ryan Potter as Hiro. The inner logic of the story and its awe-inspiring world of creation hold up strongly between the characters; playing ball with moral correctness, loss, grief and geekdom with such shattering energy that it’s exciting richness is damn near infectious. The joy spreads directly to the audience, and is yours to take.
Conclusion
Make it to the screen a little early so that you won’t miss the lovely short film preceding it. Take your family, take your friends, take your parents: it is all the same. Big Hero 6 is a stunning piece of animated wizardry: a giant-sized spectacle with a superior amount of brain and heart to accompany it. Watch it at the earliest.
What did you think of Big Hero 6, let me know in the comments below!
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