Sweet at times, but reeks of bandwagoning and cashgrabbiness.

Rating: 6/10 (23 January 2015)

Disney seems to be having a third renaissance at the moment. Tangled may have relatively flew under the radar, known mostly for its notoriously ballooned budget, but it was a very pleasant surprise. Wreck-It Ralph is the best Disney film since the 1960s, and everyone knows the immaculate success of Frozen. Now that Pixar have taken a stumble, they finally compete with their close contemporary cousins. Now comes quietly Big Hero 6 with a soft landing rather than a loud boom. Are they trying to repeat the legs of Frozen? Nevertheless, it's a swing and a miss as far as trying to implement another film into pop culture despite their different appeals. Big Hero 6 is far too derivative of its inspirations from the comic book movies these days. Instead, it reeks of bandwagoning and cashgrabbing on the Marvel success to sell toys and make video games. It feels like the only reason it's a San Francisco/Tokyo hybrid is to sell Japanese tickets. Why can't they commit to one instead of shamelessly compromising?
The intentions of the film are obvious, it's trying to get kids high on science and innovation, but it does it on the standards of Saturday morning cartoons. Granted, I did like the lead character a lot more than I expected, though it's annoying to have him be more magician than inventor. The film's emotion works and it's very sweet, though nothing new. Unfortunately I found its poster boy Baymax more irritating than endearing. Perhaps it's because I've watched too much 30 Rock and I'm used to Scott Adsit as Pete, but the conviction didn't work for me besides a few moments. Also the writers only seemed to put effort into implementing contradictions for two of the sidekick characters, incidentally both male. However, the pleasure of Disney is the detail in the nuances, an aspect which really improved in Frozen and is demonstrated here tenfold. Big Hero 6 is still an entertaining and ultimately poignant way to spend an hour and a half, but it doesn't live up to Disney's new standards.
6/10