Next Gen

There is something compelling about making a movie that observes Man's ever more reliance of machinery to find joy and meaning into their lives. Mai's mother uses it to forget about her husband, others use it to enhance their entertainment factor or as a way to impress others.

The world building is pretty good, especially how robotics weaves itself into the future USA. As a marketer, I feel bad that we are going to bombard people with branding 24/7 to get them to buy our products.

This could have been a fantastic film if it weren't for such an self centered main character, who plays a selfish, petulant child nearly throughout the whole movie, treating her "friend" as a machine, blaming him and throwing guilt on it when it only has good intentions. There is something rotten about her soul, as she never learns her lessons from the pain she inflicts, whether it is being mean to her mom and causing a bully to cry, through most of the movie.

The robot character, 7723, is a much more compelling (although it is a low bar) character, someone learning human emotions but is a robot, similar to the Iron Giant, but he as long as he plays subservient to it's master Mai, it's growth is limited.

The movie somewhat redeems itself at the end. It could have taken the easy, Disney ending, but it took a bit of a smarter move, in the vein of The Iron Giant. It also helped redeem the annoying Mai who has to change from the role of taker to provider. However, by the time she learns her lesson, it is too late.

While I am giving this Chinese/North American co-production a recommendation, I feel I should point out it's more of a marginal recommendation. Before I get into the faults of the movie, let me list some of its positive attributes. For starters, the movie looks great. The computer animation is not quite as slick as Pixar, but it's pretty close, giving the audience some great visuals and some great production design. Next, the movie certainly doesn't have any dull spots, always remaining interesting at any point. Also, the action depicted is spectacular and very exciting to behold.

If they only had a better script, however, this movie would have been a knockout. But as it is, there are some serious flaws with the writing that hold back the movie significantly. First, while I earlier said that the movie is never boring, it all the same feels way too long (106 minutes!) and the padding is extremely evident. Another big flaw is the lead teenage girl character. She is so sullen, so sour, so filled with anger and hate that it takes forever before we can start warming up to her. Also, the start of her relationship with the robot is not sketched out very well; it's hard to see how the two managed to connect so quickly and become fast friends.

Despite the inadequate script, I am still giving the movie a mild thumbs up. Adult viewers will best approach this movie with lower expectations than usual so there's a better chance they will enjoy it. Kids will probably look past the flawed writing and enjoy the whole package. There are certainly a lot worse family films for a family to watch (though there are also a lot that are much better.)

Animation was great no issue there. The story was even good. The character of Mai was were it took a negative turn for me, she is angry for a good portion of the movie working through it in various ways but never showing any sign of an improved emotional state just continuously angry, destructive, selfish and cold, honestly maybe to accurate a depiction a child's behavior after losing someone to put into a child's movie and it drags out for far to long. There is a lot of bleeped out cussing. Honestly just really bad character development in a really cool story with sweet animation.

The animation is great, the characters are likeable and it has a lot going for it that being said the story was extremely basic which made it whilst enjoyable pretty forgettable at the same time. A film most of the family will enjoy though and there will certainly be a lot worse out there of this genre.

If you are growing good kids don't see this movie with them, it has a lot of violence and bad behavior, if you are growing kids that use bad language, have rage issues and bad behavior this movie is for them.

This movie has an unlikeable manipulative broken little girl as a lead, she is so annoying until the point of want to stop the movie.

The other lead is a likable robot that feels an irrational love for the second human being that he saw, it's designed to learn morality from humans but is not well explained in the movie.

Some parts of the movie don't fit well but the animation is really well, so overall is a good movie.

Fun fact: 6 (from Big Hero 6) is a perfect number, 7723 (original webcomic from this movie) is a prime number and in consequence a deficient number only divisible by 1 and himself.