This new Disney picture is a visually striking, if derivative, family adventure unfolding in a city that looks familiar but isn’t: San Fransokyo. It’s a blend of San Francisco and Tokyo, populated by Japanese-Americans, and the Golden Gate bridge is enlivened with some new Asian-fusion-style architecture. It isn’t clear if this means the city is supposed to have evolved ethnically, or if it exists in some intriguing alternative universe.
Anyway, it’s certainly challenging and bold. Ryan Potter voices Hiro (which may be heard as “hero”), a lonely young teen with a genius for technology who finds himself the owner of a prototype new robot, Baymax – a strangely lovable, inflatable automaton programmed to provide medical attention. Hiro faces an ordeal in which Baymax is the friend or the big brother he doesn’t have, a mix of the Michelin Man and ET. Their exploits together are smart and fun, although things get less interesting when the story subordinates Hiro and Baymax’s poignant relationship to a group of wacky characters, and morphs into an Avengers-style superhero origin myth. Baymax is effectively weaponised into something whose exoskeleton has been borrowed from Iron Man and Buzz Lightyear. It makes for an entertaining spectacle, though less interesting than the one we started out with.
