Shot after shot, "Big Hero 6" is an intelligent and artful creation. There’s a scene in which the filmmakers convey a funeral taking place with a medium shot of black umbrellas opening up. They pull back to show people standing at a cemetery in the rain and then dissolve to a post-funeral gathering, filmed from the outside of the house through rain-spattered windows. And all the while, the camera is slowly moving.

At the same time, "Big Hero 6" makes full use of the animation medium. It takes place in the fictitious city of San Fransokyo, a mashup of San Francisco and Tokyo, with elevated trains and a pagoda design for the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s a pleasure just to ride the back of the camera as it swoops above these cleverly reimagined streets. And this is even before the story kicks in, which is a good one.

Without giving anything away, it’s about the partnership between a teenage robotics prodigy and a home health care robot who join forces to solve a crime. The robot is adorable. I know, it’s weird (and more than a little pathetic) to call something adorable that doesn’t really exist except as a computer rendering, but Baymax the robot truly is loveable — white, inflated, very fat, with a soothing unthreatening voice (Scott Adsit) and a desire to help everyone.

Baymax and Hiro (Ryan Potter) go off into the San Fransokyo streets to solve a mystery, and along the way they’re joined by a group of computer nerds, all experts in robotics. In future movies they will be known collectively as Big Hero 6, and they very well might become as annoying as the Fantastic Four. But the story of their origins makes for pleasant viewing.

‘BIG HERO 6’ Rated: PG Opens Friday

"Big Hero 6" is a funny movie, and not in that forced way of older animated films, with a few jokes aimed over the head of the kiddies just to make the ordeal tolerable for adults. The humor here works for all ages. There’s a sequence that equates a robot’s running out of battery power with a person’s getting drunk. That might not sound like a scream just hearing about it, but in the movie it’s very funny.

Once the writers establish Baymax as a character, they never forget his potential for comedy, so that even in the midst of action sequences, they come up with comical bits of business. These include physical bits (like being too fat to fit through a window), recurring jokes and jokes based on character, such as his assumption that his job is to look after everyone’s health.

The visuals are splendid. Even close-ups of face and hair are something to marvel at. There’s an extended sequence in which Baymax and Hiro fly through the city that’s gorgeous and exhilarating. It produces that "knees weak" sensation that’s really more like a tingle in the back of your knees.

The only thing "Big Hero 6" has going against it is its length. It begins to drag after about an hour, and though it’s too witty and well-made to become tiresome, nobody who sees it will wish it were longer. A 10-minute trim — with a pair of scissors, not a meat ax — would take this movie up a level.

The film is preceded by a short film called "Feast," about family life as seen from the perspective of a dog, who like all dogs, is concerned mainly with eating and being sociable. It’s an enchanted little film, funny and moving — truly a thing of beauty.