Movie Review: ‘Big Hero 6’

Big Hero 6 Movie Review
Baymax and Hiro in ‘Big Hero 6’ (Photo © 2014 Disney. All Rights Reserved.)

“Hello, I am Baymax, your personal health care companion,” says the plus-sized inflatable medical robot Baymax (voiced by Scott Adsit) to young Hiro (Ryan Potter), a brilliant 14 year old robotics prodigy who’s still grieving the loss of a loved one in the animated family-friendly action/comedy Big Hero 6.

After wasting his time with robot fighting, Hiro gets extremely motivated to harness and focus his talents on going to the same university that his big brother, Tadashi (Daniel Henney), attends after witnessing all the amazing experiments and devices his brother and his friends are working on. However, when a horrible fire breaks out at the university and seems to claim the lives of two people who Hiro respected and cared about, Hiro becomes despondent and withdrawn.


Baymax, Tadashi’s medical robot expert, becomes activated and determined to help Hiro through his depression and time of grieving. When a mysterious masked figure suddenly appears in the city with some of Hiro’s small but very useful micro-bots (small robots that working together and can take almost any form) that Hiro believed had been destroyed by the fire, Hiro becomes determined to find out who the masked figure is and what he’s up to. He turns to Tadashi’s friends and Baymax and transforms the brainy geeks and medical robot into a group of high-tech heroes called Big Hero 6.

Action-packed, funny and heartfelt, Big Hero 6 is an animated superhero adventure which will have audiences rooting for Hiro and Baymax right up to when the credits roll. This is a bright, colorful, and visually impressive film with wonderful animation and better than average character development.

Scott Adsit does a great job of bringing to life Baymax, the medical robot who’s Tadashi’s crowning achievement and becomes, thanks to Hiro, a most effective crime fighting, flying robot. Adsit’s delivery of Baymax’s lines, especially when he and Hiro are in some sort of danger, is pitch perfect and often hilarious. Ryan Potter is very effective as the voice of Hiro and adds plenty of emotion for the grief-stricken and later furious under-age hero who’s just trying to uncover the truth about the masked man and his micro-bots.

Big Hero 6 looks stunning with its semi-future design of San Fransokyo and the use of bright, almost glowing colors. The writing is both humorous and at times very touching, dealing with such emotions as grief, love, friendship, fear, anger, and pride in a more serious and mature nature than most animated films these days.

With thrilling action, laugh-out-loud moments, and well-developed characters, Big Hero 6 is one of the few 2014 animated movies not to be missed up on the big screen.

GRADE: B

Interview with directors Don Hall and Chris Williams

Big Hero 6 is rated PG for action and peril, some rude humor, and thematic elements.

– Reviewed by Kevin Finnerty

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