Big Hero 6

The new Metacritic rating system

Grade: A –

Director: Don Hall, Chris Williams

Starring the voices of: Scott Adist, Ryan Potter, Daniel Henney, T.J. Miller, Jamie Chung, Damon Wayans Jr., Genesis Rodriguez, Alan Tudyk, James Cromwell and Maya Rudolph

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 1 hr. 48 min.

Mined from the recesses of the Marvel Comics catalogue, Big Hero 6 is the first Walt Disney Animation adaptation since Disney acquired Marvel Entertainment five years ago. The relative anonymity of the source material allows writer-directors Don Hall (Winnie the Pooh) and Chris Williams (Bolt) the creative license to fashion a film free of fanboy preconceptions and expectations.

Let’s ponder for a moment what could have been: another Marvel movie about a team of mutant superheroes the vein of The Avengers, X-Men, and Guardians of the Galaxy, except this time for the kids. Instead, Disney retools the property into not just a riff on the superhero origin story, but also a movie with genuine wit, warmth, energy and sentimentality. The result is one of the best animated films this year (only The Lego Movie is its rival at the moment).

At the urging of his older brother Tadashi (voiced by Daniel Henney), 14-year-old prodigy Hiro Hamada (Ryan Potter) abandons nights spent hustling underground robot fights to seek enrollment at the Institute of Technology in San Fransokyo, a visual portmanteau of San Francisco and Tokyo. Indeed, the film’s overarching construct is a knowing amalgam of eastern animation stylings and western storytelling sensibilities.

Hiro earns admission by creating billions of shape-shifting nanobots, all controlled telepathically by their user and capable of adopting an endless array of uses and formations. Hiro spurns an offer to sell his nanobots to a tech conglomerate headed by entrepreneur Alistair Krei (Alan Tudyk). Shortly thereafter, a fire engulfs the institute with Tadashi and Prof. Robert Callaghan (James Cromwell), the institute’s head of robotics and Tadashi’s mentor, still inside.

Hiro vows revenge on the masked villain who killed his brother, and he recruits Tadashi’s whiz kid classmates to help. Using their scientific ingenuity, GoGo (Jamie Chung) affixes electromagnetic wheels to her ankles to move about at blazing speed, neatnik Wasabi (Damon Wayans Jr.) fashions a pair of laser blades to his arms, Honey Lemon (Genesis Rodriguez) is a quirky whiz whose purse doubles as a chemistry set, and Fred (T.J. Miller) is a laid-back rich kid (see: the wealthy alter ego trope) who dons a Kaiju suit that blasts real fire.

Yet the film’s heart and soul is Baymax (Scott Adist), a portly, inflatable robot constructed by Tadashi and, thanks to Baymax’s SIM chip, Hiro’s last link to his departed brother. Programmed with a quiet manner and childlike innocence, Baymax is designed as a prototype personal healthcare companion. “Are you satisfied with your care?” Baymax asks at the conclusion of each treatment, and the request takes on deeper emotional meaning throughout the film.

Baymax’s pliable interpretation of his healthcare imperative compels him to assist Hiro in his search for justice. In furtherance of that, Hiro programs Baymax to master a variety of martial arts and covers his Stay-Puft-Marshmallow exterior with more durable armour. But all these accoutrements cannot mask Baymax’s innate humanity. In a film blessed with photo-realistic animation, fashioning such a visually pared-down central character is radical unto itself.

And amusing. While Hiro and pals get their share of wisecracks, it's Baymax who produces the biggest laughs. A scene where Baymax uses Scotch tape from a police sergeant's dispenser to plug leaks in his latex-like dermis is classic absurdist humor, as is his low battery mood being akin to intoxication. And the robot's computerized approximation of a fist-bump is what your kids will be repeating days later.

Among the provocative themes in Big Hero 6 is the fine line between justice and vengeance plus society’s temptation to misuse our technological advances. Even more gratifying is casting education and gifted youngsters as heroic. But at the film’s core is a study of grief and maturation, all through the prism of a young boy and his robotic companion. Equipped with soaring, eye-popping visuals, Big Hero 6 will both have your heart pounding and put a lump in your throat.

The Way, Way Back

Grade: B -

Directors: Nat Faxon and Jim Rash

Starring: Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Liam James, Sam Rockwell, AnnaSophia Robb, Rob Corddry, Amanda Peet and Maya Rudolph

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 43 min.

The Hollywood assembly line is just as geared to churn out faux-indie dramatic comedies as another sight & sound show about fighting robots. Although (or Because) The Way, Way Back debuted at January’s Sundance Film Festival, even its late July release date is transparently strategic: late enough to avoid the summer box office behemoths, late enough in the year that it won’t be totally forgotten once awards time rolls around, but far enough removed from November and December that it won’t get capsized by higher quality film fare.

Still, just because something is mass-produced—whether it’s food, cars or movies—doesn’t mean it can’t also be enjoyable. And in the wake of a summer season filled with sequels of the week, superheroes, zombies and Johnny Depp wearing a freakin’ crow on his head, a serviceable coming-of-age dramedy, no matter how generic, is a welcome diversion.

It’s a tumultuous time for 14-year-old Duncan (Liam James), who is conscripted to spend the summer with his divorced mother Pam (Toni Collette) at the Massachusetts beach house of her new boyfriend, Trent (Steve Carrell), and Trent’s catty teenage daughter Stephanie. On the ride down, Trent rates Duncan’s current life worthiness at three on a 10-point scale, effectively establishing both Trent’s passive-aggressive churlishness and his strained relationship with Duncan.

It’s no small irony that the name of Trent’s cottage is “Riptide,” as a morass of conflicting psychological forces rules this roost. The mood gets no better once Trent’s circle of friends comes calling, including Betty (Allison Janney), the boozy flibbertigibbet neighbor, and Kip (Rob Corddry) and Joan (Amanda Peet), Trent’s equally shallow pals.

Isolated and ostracized at every turn, the dour Duncan finds solace in two places. First is Susanna (AnnaSophia Robb), Betty’s strikingly grounded daughter, who takes an instant liking to her newfound neighbor. The other is Water Wizz, an area aquatic park where Duncan takes furtive bike rides to work and hang out with Owen (Sam Rockwell), one of the park’s longtime employees and resident wiseacre.

Making their directorial debuts, writers Nat Faxon and North Carolina native Jim Rash—both last seen winning an Oscar for their screenplay for “The Descendants”—reportedly drew on their own childhood experiences to craft their latest script. But, there’s also a snapshot of This Boy’s Life, a morsel of Meatballs and a layover in Adventureland. Moreover, from the adult actors’ ages to the conspicuously 80s soundtrack, the film seems more fixated on the arrested development of this group of Generation Xers facing their midlife crossroads.

It’s a sledgehammer of a metaphor that Water Wizz serves as Duncan’s personal oasis away from the rest of his complicated life. Given the neuroses enveloping Duncan’s home life, it’s comforting that Owen’s friendship lacks any ulterior motive, and that Susanna’s fondness comes without strings or wavering.

Nevertheless, James plays the latest iteration of a young actor’s role familiarized by Anton Yelchin/Josh Peck/Logan Lerman/Reece Thompson/etc. (Jesse Eisenberg and Michael Cera are two of the few members of this club to separate themselves from the pack). However, Owen is a role tailor-made for Rockwell, who is given the meatiest dialogue and reciprocates with the one performance that awards voters are most likely to remember from way, way back in July.

*Orginally published at INDYWeek.com

Bridesmaids

Divine Secrets of the Apatow Sisterhood

Grade: C +

Director: Paul Feig

Starring: Kristin Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Ellie Kemper, Melissa McCarthy, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Jon Hamm, and Chris O’Dowd

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 2 hr. 5 min.

In anticipation of the rush to anoint Kristin Wiig the funniest female Saturday Night Live alum since Tina Fey, it might be instructive to contrast Fey’s Liz Lemon in 30 Rock to Wigg’s madcap maid of honor in Bridesmaids. Admittedly a dorky child of the 1980s, it always seems Lemon’s marked neuroses are the put-upon product of a career woman stubbornly living sexless in the city, an executive competing in a male-dominated industry and coping with the prejudices heaped upon female who goes without a spouse or child past a particular age. Her obstinate independence is both her strength and comedic curse.

In Bridesmaids, on the other hand, Wiig’s Annie shuttered her Milwaukee bakery when she could not handle the pressure and is locked in a pointless relationship with a vain, wealth playboy (Jon Hamm) who doesn’t even bother to unlock his front gate of his mansion after he unceremoniously kicks her out following a night of awkward coitus.

Broke and lovelorn, all Annie apparently has left in life is her longstanding friendship with bride-to-be Lillian (Maya Rudolph). So, when Lillian’s newest BFF, the rich and pretty Helen (Rose Byrne), begins to usurp Annie’s position as maid of honor, Annie’s eccentricities explode into full-blown personality disorder.

Annie and Helen first clash by trying to one-up each other’s toasts at an engagement party. It’s a scene that rambles well past its amusing set-up, like many in Bridemaids that Wiig conducts as if they were one of her interminable Gilly or Penelope SNL sketches.

Directed by Freaks and Geeks’ Peter Feig and operating under the imprimatur of producer Judd Apatow, Bridesmaids is essentially an estrogen-filled knockoff of The Hangover, minus the roofie-induced amnesia. A bachelorette party in Vegas is canceled after Annie’s midair drunkenness gets her kicked off the plane; a group meal at a local Brazilian dive leads to an attack of proverbial scatology.

The bridesmaids themselves are an assemblage of Hollywood archetypes: the protagonist and her best friend of color, the pretty rich girl, Megan, the brassy fat chick (Melissa McCarthy, who walks away with her every scene), the desperate housewife (Wendi McLendon-Covey), and the mousey innocent (The Office’s Ellie Kemper).

There’s also what barely passes for a love interest between Annie and Nathan (Chris O’Dowd), a state trooper who retains his Irish accent and a taste for Annie’s dormant culinary skills. But Nathan’s fixation, like every other promising subplot –hints at Helen’s volatile relationship with her preteen stepchildren; Megan’s furtive fortune – gets abandoned on the way the finale of yet another wedding comedy.

There are plenty of guilty guffaws to go around throughout Bridemaids. While Wiig’s performance in her headliner debut is fearless and endearing in its self-deprecation, the scattershot approach to Wiig’s writing insures that every 15 minutes of aimlessly will yield one minute of hilarity. But, for those who contend that the film strikes a blow for feminism, all it really proves is that women can tell poop jokes, too.

Neil Morris