A teenage programming prodigy develops an emotional bond with a robot designed by his brother, who has since died, and because this is adapted from a Marvel Comics series (by Steven T. Seagle and Duncan Rouleau), both boy and robot become superheroes, the sweet-tempered story devolving into a series of disaster-movie set pieces. This computer-animated feature from Disney takes place in a Steve Jobs wet dream where computers are treated like people and people aspire to be like machines (the boy and his human friends become “super” by affixing high-tech gadgets to their bodies). There’s enough tried-and-true Disney sentiment here to counter the rampant antihumanism, and the futuristic settings look spectacular, but this left me feeling gross. Don Hall and Chris Williams directed.
Big Hero 6
PG • 1 hour 48 min • 2014
