Have
the Walt Disney and Pixar animation studios become Walt Pixar, or maybe
Wixar or Dixar? It’s getting hard to tell these once-distinct siblings
apart. Disney’s latest animated feature, “Big Hero 6,”
is a bright, visually sumptuous 3-D computer-animated feature that
gives you a bit of an emotional workout. It doesn’t have some of the
familiar Disney markers: There are no eardrum-busting anthems or
warbling critters, and it isn’t a fairy tale, exactly, mostly because
it’s about a boy. It’s a Disney superhero movie with a story from a
Marvel comic book, if one rendered with the wit and texture often
associated with Pixar, which I guess makes it a Walt Pixar Marvel.
That’s
certainly a good way to think of Baymax, the big, beautiful, bouncy
white robot who toddles, waddles, squeaks and rather more prosaically
flies through “Big Hero 6.” As voiced by Scott Adsit
(from “30 Rock”), Baymax has a soothing, comforting voice that at first
brings to mind the far more creepily insinuating one of HAL 9000, the computer villain from “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
But Baymax, much like the movie itself, represents technological
optimism at its shiniest and most reassuring. The robot has been created
as a “health care companion,” which means that he’s either a furtive
endorsement of Obamacare or a criticism of the same, though he’s
probably just a futuristic Florence Nightingale that looks like a
cuddlier, more streamlined Michelin Man.
Directed by Don Hall
and Chris Williams, “Big Hero 6” opens with a borderline-frenetic
action sequence that announces its tone and PG-rated turf with
swaggering humor, signaling that this is no once-upon-a time kiddie
kingdom. In a dark corner of the whimsically named city of San Fransokyo
(it is a small world), a rowdy crowd has gathered for illegal
fights in which remote-controlled robot combatants square off. Here,
amid cheers, swooping visuals and the score’s pounding beats, the
14-year-old prodigy Hiro Hamada (Ryan Potter) makes like a seasoned
hustler with a shark smile and a robot annihilator, a triumph that leads
to a getaway, a failed race to the rescue and a stint in jail.
Once
Hiro has been sprung from jail by his Aunt Cass (Maya Rudolph), the
story pieces begin sliding into place. Hiro and his older brother,
Tadashi (Daniel Henney), live with Cass above her San Fran-cool bakery
and cafe. She’s a disappointingly bland maternal creation, by turns
screechy and huggy, and Tadashi isn’t much better, even if he’s a hunky
brainiac who studies at an institute of higher nerdiness alongside a Scooby Doo-like posse: a slacker, Fred (a funny T. J. Miller);
a tough chick, GoGo (Jamie Chung); a priss, Honey Lemon (Genesis
Rodriguez); and a dude with dreads, Wasabi (Damon Wayans Jr.). The group
is as harmoniously balanced as a university diversity committee, and
largely distinguished by safe quirks of personality rather than
stereotypes and unfunny accents.
No comments:
Post a Comment