Thursday, November 13, 2014

Big Hero 6 - 3 stars

Based on the Marvel comic, the story is set in the futuristic hybrid metropolis called San Fransokyo.  A young robotics prodigy named Hero and his robot Baymax uncover a criminal plot and pull together a team of inexperienced crime-fighters to defeat a masked supervillain.

It’s an interesting idea to make a Marvel superhero movie as a Disney animated movie.  If it were live action, I’m sure Baymax would not be quite so cute and huggable.  But Disney knows that Baymax will be a huge selling point to young kids.  For slightly older kids, they’ll get a kick out of the action and technology.  The members of the team don’t have superpowers.  Instead, Hero invents suits they wear that give them their abilities. 

As a superhero movie, it wasn’t terribly original.  After all the super movies we’ve been getting over the last several years, I felt like I’ve seen the movie before.  It’s no surprise who the villain turns out to be, or what his plan is.  However, I did like the twist that the heroes were kids.  I think kids will be able to identify with Hero and his friends easier than someone like Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne.

The powers they get are pretty cool.  One has these discs she uses as wheels and as weapons.  One has laser swords that come out of his arms, and they look like the sword in Halo.  And one has a suit that looks like Godzilla, with claws and fire breath.

As an animated movie, it worked.  It had a good amount of humor and action.  I took my nieces and nephews (ages 5 to 10), and they all loved the movie.  Personally I have a hard time getting that into animated movies, but this one kept my interest.  Probably my biggest complaint was that it was too long.  It was two hours, and animated movies usually work best when they’re under 90 minutes.


Overall I enjoyed the movie.  It’s definitely a good choice if you’re taking the whole family.

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