Big Hero Six - Movie Review

May Contain Spoilers

A short summary of this movie is that Hiro (Supah Ninja's Ryan Potter) is a 13 year-old genius loses his genius brother Tadashi (Male Model Daniel Henney) who invented Baymax (30 Rock's Scott Adsit), a med robot and seeks to stop a mysterious man in a kabuki mask who seems to have stolen his own invention. Tadashi went to a technology university with colorful friends who become Hiro's teammates like tough chick GoGo (Jamie Chung), Follow-the-rules Always-in-order Wasabi (New Girl's Damon Wayans Jr.), goofy dreamer Fred (Silicon Valley's T.J. Miller), and Manic Pixie Dream Girl Honey Lemon (Miami's Genesis Rodriguez). The sidekicks come off one-dimensional without a lot of depth. We first see Fred only in a comical manner so when we first see him serious, it looks ingenue. 

Baymax is a well-meaning A.I. fish-out-of-water huggable and lovable character, an innocent. When we first meet Hiro, he is doing illegal gambling in robot battles and Tadashi is his protective older brother that only wants the best for him. The whole movie is an ode to Japanese culture (Hiro has a Mazinger Z clock in his bedroom), set in the fictional San Franstokyo. It is the usual coming-of-age story with the Disney tropes of loosing a love one. It is a bit over-kill that Hiro has lost his parents and then his brother. The story is a bit predictable. The villain is hinted upon to be the millionare Alistair Krei (Suburgatory's Alan Tudyk), I had a feeling the characters would think it would be him and they did and then I knew it wouldn't be him. And there you go.

 

Hiro convince/tricks Baymax and his friends in a different manners to become the team. For Baymax, he tells him to capture the kabuki mask guy would make him happy. He tells the gang all they are doing is taking off the mask of the villain-which controls the robots that Hiro made and were stolen. But what Hiro later becomes obsessed with is revenge and almost kills. Well, he wants Baymax to kill and it gets deliciously dark. Of course being a Disney film, he learns his lesson quickly and changes his mind. But there is that duality there with him and the villain, here are the spoilers:

FOR SURE SPOILERS

The villain of course ends up being Hidashi's mentor and he wants revenge on Alistair for losing his daughter in  failed experiment. But when Hiro asks Callaghan about Hidashi, he says it was his own fault, not seeing the irony in that Hiro lost his brother and wants revenge and he wants the same thing--he wants his daughter back. If you seen the movie, you know that Hiro and Baymax end up saving his daughter and bringing her back. The movie could had done in two directions: Callaghan could have gotten Hiro on his side by convincing him Callaghan started the fire and get revenge for Hidashi on Callaghan as well. The second direction could had been that Callghan could had egged on Hiro more so about the loss of his brother in order to drive him to the edge of committing a double suicide-kind of thing but of course, that's way too dark for Disney but has happened in Pixar's Incredibles.

Conclusion

Anyway, the movie is funny and great but has noticeable flaws. As for cameos and in-jokes, there are references to Kajuu (Godzilla-like monsters like Fred's costume), giant robos (like the aforementioned Mazinger Z), Sentai (masks in Fred's room) and other Anime (Samurai Pizza Cats in the end credits). I don't want to be a total negative person, it is a pretty movie but is it better than Frozen? It's like comparing apples and oranges. But is it better than Meet the Robinsons, Bolt and Chicken Little? Lightyears.