Baymax Saves the Day (and the Film Too!)

Rating: 8/10 (7 November 2014)

The city is San Fransokyo, a hybrid between San Francisco and Tokyo. Hiro Tadashi is a bored child prodigy who graduated high school at 13, and whiles his time making fighter robots. His brother Tadashi is in college under esteemed pioneer Robert Callaghan, working on his own project -- a big white inflatable robot nurse named Baymax.
After Hiro develops a highly original, versatile and powerful mind- controlled microbot technology, Callaghan invites him into his program as well. However, that same fateful night, a big explosive fire breaks out at the school building with a highly tragic aftermath which would flip Hiro's world over.
With Baymax as his invaluable robot sidekick, Hiro would discover that there was something more behind that fire. Hiro uses his techy genius to upgrade the abilities of Baymax, along with four of his brothers' inventor friends -- Gogo, Honey Lemon, Wasabi and Fred -- to from a group of six superheroes who sought to get to the bottom of the mystery of the man in the Kabuki mask behind the whole thing.
It was only after the film that I found out that Big Hero 6 was actually a group of superheroes from Marvel Comics back in the late 1990s. This is the first Disney animated film that featured Marvel comic characters since the former acquired the latter in 2009. Disney was given license to change the appearances of the characters for the film version, Disney-fying them so to speak.
While watching the film, I got the vibe of Pixar's "The Incredibles", and even the rival company Dreamworks' "How to Train Your Dragon." But this film had its own memorable moments, mostly thanks to that adorable giant marshmallow of a robot, Baymax.
Baymax is really a wonder to watch. His face is nothing more than a two black dots connected by a line. However he can convey so much emotion with those. A lot of the credit I guess would fall on his animators who were successful to create a genuinely cute character who is not annoying (Olaf anyone?) The voice acting of Scott Adsit also gave Baymax his kind and compassionate character.
If not for Baymax, this whole film would be a generic superhero cartoon with little to remember it by. We did not really know the other four members of the team except that they were friends and classmates of Tadashi who had invented some awesome stuff. Hiro is the usual spirited Disney boy hero, but for a change this hero was no fool or weakling. His supreme intellect and engineering skills set him apart.
However, these may all be just nitpicking because as a whole the film was very entertaining and enjoyable for the whole family. The animated special effects were fantastically conceived, executed and great to watch. As a sucker for films featuring brothers, I loved that the story between Hiro and Tadashi was so touchingly told.
Since this is technically a Disney-Marvel film, do wait for an extra scene after ALL the end credits. The credits rolled for an interminable ten minutes before the extra scene, but these scene is a must-see and worth the long wait. This short scene features a cameo from a guy we see in cameos from most all Marvel films.