My 4-year-old daughter loved Frozen, like gazillions of other girls. So when we heard the same team was coming out with a new Disney animated movie called Big Hero 6, I was excited to see the film with her. And apparently I wasn't alone: the theater was mobbed by hundreds of other Frozen-ophile kids and their parents, all jockeying for decent seats.
The anticipation was palpable: would this movie (an adaptation of the same-named Marvel comic) be as good as Frozen, or even better? What immediately became clear was that this film — about a 14-year-old robotics prodigy named Hiro and his 10-foot-tall inflatable robot friend, Baymax — seemed designed to capture the imaginations of boys much more than the princesses and ice castles of Disney's past hit.
Plus, this film is not a musical, so don't expect your kids to bellow some catchy new ditty like "Let It Go" all winter, either (phew).
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Baymax, with his balloon-like build and black circle eyes, is as cute and cuddly as robots get — as a friend of Hiro's put it, hugging Baymax is like "spooning a warm marshmallow." I'd wager good money that Baymax will be a huge Christmas toy this year. Case in point: the inflatable model outside the movie theater was mobbed with kids who wanted to poke his tummy and pose for pics.
But the movie was not all warm and fuzzy. For instance, during the opening "bot fights," robots were ripping each other's heads off. Later on, a building exploded, which convinced my daughter to climb into my lap. There she remained for the rest of the film, since she was also frightened watching the "bad" robots chase Hiro, Baymax, and his friends. At one point, they drove their car into a river and nearly drowned before Baymax turned into a life preserver and saved the day.
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Bottom line: Kids will need a stronger stomach than Frozen fans had for violence and even death, which strikes someone close to Hiro and haunts him throughout the movie. But for all these rough patches, Baymax is the perfect salve, offering warm hugs and his sweetly serious sense of robot humor.
Here's a clip from the movie showing Baymax in all his adorableness:
Embedded content: //www.youtube.com/embed/uEeBXUUOBiI?rel=0
__What scares your kids in movies? __
Image via Walt Disney Films
