A children's film about a boy and his robot. What's not to like, right? Those were the thoughts going through my head pre-credits, and they slowly drifted away during the first 10 minutes of the movie. Those 10 minutes are heavy handed, poorly acted, and exposition crammed. I've seen worse, as I'm sure most movie goers have, but it was a disappointing start, especially for a movie that had received such rave reviews from the critics, and and from Matt Jones, Kansas Universities finest paleontologist master student, and a fellow Walking Critic . The guy loves comic book movies, and Big Hero Six is a Marvel property, so you can see why I was starting to question his opinion.
I was afraid I was going to have to write my first negative review since Patch Adams. It was looking bleak. But then, something happened. A character died in an unexpected explosion (cue super hero beginning story line here), and from there the movie went up. This change in the films course can all be credited to the appearance of Baymax, the walking, talking marshmallow robot, who's only goal is to insure the physical and mental health of his human patients. This of course provides much of the comedy of the film, and not surprisingly, this is also where all of the genuine moments of the film are found. Baymax is the heart of Big Hero 6, not the human characters. They're mostly stiff, and uninteresting, and those that aren't are too cartoony to be believable. We can believe Baymax is what he is, a Health Care Companion bot who only want's to help others, but not at the expense of the greater good of humanity. He's the perfect hero for the story, despite his owner's name arguing to the contrary (The robot's owner's name is Hiro: pronounced, "Hero").
Though the film is a children's movie, one with no inappropriate, or intelligent insulting jokes, it is one that can be enjoyed by all ages, especially if you're a robot lover at heart.