Should have been rated G...

Rating: Null/10 (3 March 2015)

... because only a kid less than ten years old would enjoy this movie. And this movie is proof that Academy Award voters often don't watch the movies they vote for.
The movie is riddled with clichés almost from the beginning. When the brother is running into the burning building you see his hat fly off and conveniently land in front of Hiro. When I saw that, and before I knew what was going to happen had actually happened, I asked myself if I really cared at that point if he died? The answer was no because like every other character in this movie, they're all carbon copies of one another. There's nothing about them that makes you care.
So after seeing that cliché dropped at my feet, I knew this was going to be bad. And it was.
The main character makes absolutely no sense when you stop to think about it. He graduates from high school at 13 and creates a small robot that every non-genius can't create in a lifetime. Somehow, despite this massive intellect, he seems to have flown completely under the academic radar throughout his shortened jaunt through school because he has received what appears to be no job offers to top flight companies, no scholarships to top universities, nor any of the other trappings that intellectual prowess over your peers provides. His mother only gently urges him to make more of himself and treats him as a pet, basically.
As a result, he seems to have become completely devoid of any ambition after graduation other than to use his amazing robot to become the nerd equivalent of a pool shark. Even less-than-geniuses realize that stealing money from people who have much less concern for the law than you is not a way to make a living.
With just a little brainstorming and a single trip to a robot shot he devises an even more spectacular robot that has a hive mentality, something I can safely say nobody, not even in his cartoon universe, has ever achieved, especially to the degree he has. If that's all it takes to get him going, the obvious question is "is he a shut-in?" I mean, does he ever go outside? Did he not realize such things existed before?
After the scene where the robot was basically acting drunk, I fell asleep. I admit I didn't watch the rest of it until I woke up and he was, I don't know, going crazy and trying to get the robot to kill someone and everyone was of course trying to talk him out of it. Who didn't see that coming? That was the Academy Award moment there, and I almost missed it. Phew! /s
Glad I rented this rather than buying it. I was tempted to just outright buy it because I usually love computer animated films, but something didn't seem right about this one. It had a high rating on basically every review site but when I watched the trailer I wasn't impressed at all. Even the trailer was a cliché. And hey, I was right, it wasn't funny in the least. I didn't laugh even once.
The characters are all one-dimensional. They're all carbon copies of each other which makes them all basically just props that you can have no emotional investment in. The bad guy is obviously bad and there is no subtlety to his character at all. Oh and of course one of them is black.
Their parents are dead? Why? It isn't explained. Are we supposed to feel more attached to a character just because he's an orphan? Puh-leez. What Disney-fied pandering nonsense.
It wasn't until after I'd lost interest that I went back and looked at how this was different than the other animated features I liked, and there it was. This wasn't made by Pixar or Dreamworks, no, it was made directly by Disney. The same company that ran out of ideas decades ago and started cranking out carbon copy films. The same computer animation studio that made the other animated feature you have to be ten to enjoy: Frozen. I'm just amazed there's no singing in this one.
Note to self: don't watch anymore movies made by Disney. Buy the stock, not the films.