Film Brief: 'Big Hero 6' (2014)

TITLE: Big Hero 6
DIRECTOR: Don Hall, Chris Williams
SCREENWRITERS: Jordan Roberts, Daniel Gerson, Robert L. Baird (based on the characters created by Duncan Rouleau and Steven T. Seagle) (Heads of Story: Paul Briggs, Joseph Mateo)

IN BRIEF(ish):
After plundering fairy tales for stories to integrate into what would become the "canon" of Animated Classics (the most recent example being the seemingly immortalised Frozen), Disney more "modern mythologies", such as video games in 2012's Wreck-It-Ralph and now Marvel comics in Big Hero 6.  And indeed, after the Marvel Cinematic Universe turned going to the movies into homework assignments (the biggest chore being 2013's Thor: The Dark World), Big Hero 6 is one of the best looking of the latest Marvel offers.  The design of San Fransokyo makes this Disney's Blade Runner and it makes a great case for the good that CGI can be put to as well as what depth to CG animation that 3D can bring.  It is also one of the most fun so far.  On my so-far initial viewing of Guardians Of The Galaxy (2014), I could not get into it and dismissed it as a Saturday morning cartoon on a similar par to DC's flop Green Lantern (2011), although admittedly it may have been as much to do with the environment in which I was watching it and will give it another chance soon.  But Big Hero 6 is proper good fun and a real treat to take kids to see as a Saturday matinee.  It is funny, even if not quite in the same way as Wreck-It-Ralph's near-Aardman-esque humour, isn't entirely clean-cut when it comes to deciding it's heroes and villains (even the protagonist makes a not particularly heroic choice) and it has a likeable USP character in inflatable robot Baymax.  It does somewhat suffer a common problem from Disney animations in that it isn't easy to get emotionally invested in its CG humans (Frozen perhaps comes close) and one set piece gag about Baymax getting inebriated as a result of running low on batteries is simply a one-off and is never paid off in a way one would expect in the film's climax.