Big Hero 6 long on story, cool effects

There’s a general rule of thumb for screenwriters, especially for those who put pen to paper for poppy bubblegum potboilers with a typical three-act structure, much like what passes for family animated features and superhero movies:

Introduce your main characters and have something exciting happen to propel the plot, all within the first 10 minutes.

Somebody get the Book of Rules of Thumb for Screenwriters to Robert L. Baird, Daniel Gerson and Jordan Roberts, the three scribes behind Big Hero 6.

Don’t get me wrong. This is a fun movie that offers some interesting visuals and still has a heartfelt message or two thrown in to make sure that Mom and Dad feel that the adventure ends on a positive note.

But something about how the first 20 or 30 minutes drag along with a gargantuan amount of exposition and relationship-building moments between brothers Hiro – yes, pronounced like ‘Hero’ – and Tadashi (voiced by Ryan Potter and Daniel Henney). They’re both geniuses in the world of robotics, except that Hiro prefers to create battlebots and participate in the underground bot fighting circuit. He’s only 14 so Tadashi tries to spark in him some interest in doing something creative for the technological community at large.

He invents mini robots that are controlled by a telekinetic headband to join together and create anything that the imagination can devise. Honestly, it’s a fine idea but it all gets destroyed right after he unveils his invention at a major techno fair. A fiery explosion consumes the building with Tadashi inside.

Side note: this synopsis of the film’s introduction already seems onerous, doesn’t it? Now you know what I mean.

Before he was killed, Tadashi invented a personal healthcare companion robot. Got a scratch? Baymax (voiced by Scott Adsit) will put a bandage on it. But Hiro is sad and the only thing that will make him happy again is to find the person who killed Tadashi.

Enlisting the help of Tadashi’s four research mates, the sextet sets out to right the wrongs, learning about the value of letting go and not seeking revenge on those who trespass against you.

OK, all of that is fine. Once we get over that 30-minute hump, everything in the movie is action and life lessons. Because it’s in 3-D, our heroes fly for extended periods through the skies over San Fransokyo, the movie’s fictionalized futuristic setting. Because every animated movie is in an informal competition to create scenes with far too many individual elements (snowflakes in Frozen, for example), we, the audience, also get treated to the many, many ways those mini bots can turn into bridges or weapons or whatever else.

I liked Big Hero 6 but I had to watch it all the way through first to get any sense of what it was. It’s a cross between The Incredibles and The Avengers, which makes sense since it’s a Disney movie that was borne out of a Marvel comic book series. For most of my time in the audience, I was wondering what – if any – movie I was watching.

At the end of it, my biggest complaint is a familiar one regarding depictions of females in ‘family’ movies. Did they have to be so skinny and wear such skimpy clothes? I have my doubts.