Monday 12 January 2015

REVIEW - BIG HERO 6 (DON HALL AND CHRIS WILLIAMS)


It's hard to gauge where the cycle begins, whether it was reality that first influenced art, or art that first influenced reality. Either way, this cycle of bloated expectations too often produces inferior art, in the wrong hands, and disappointing reality, in most everyone's hands - fantasy that can never quite compare, and that can never come true for mere mortals. Big Hero 6 is a product of this cycle, a far-fetched fantasy supposedly rooted in reality, encouraging its target audience to be inspired by its hollow message as it identifies with the basic stereotypes it offers up as characters. In this bedazzling, monotonous action comedy, the discerning viewer seeks out whatever artistry, and whatever entertainment, they can, and they'll be sure not to be entirely underwhelmed by this otherwise nondescript animation from Disney. The most striking aspect of Big Hero 6, and the one that shades its most affecting passages at the film's outset and towards its end, is its emotional tangent. All filmmakers manipulate, though few do so with quite the nerve that's displayed here; somehow, Big Hero 6 doesn't cloy, doesn't enervate as one objectively feels it ought to. It's just rather hard to convince yourself to think critically when there are tears in your eyes. Big Hero 6 represents Disney Animation in a less adventurous mode than it might like us to believe - they're still following their usual blueprint, a tried and tested blueprint, of course, only coloured by details from the blueprints of the studio's live action blockbusters, so don't expect anything radical from this film. Don't expect anything particularly... anything, truthfully, since Big Hero 6 appears even designed to be as unremarkable as it can. But that's probably the smoothest route to having a fairly fun time watching it.

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