No Place Like It: A Review of Home

directed by Tim Johnson
written by Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember

I could be mistaken, but I think that the brand new Dreamworks' Animated film Home has the distinction of being the most benign alien-invasion movie ever made.

Here, an alien race known as the Boov, led by the idiotic Captain Smek (Steve Martin), travel across space, constantly fleeing from a terrifying alien race known as the Gorg, and settling on new worlds and then fleeing once the Gorg has caught up with them. The chase has left several destroyed worlds in its wake.

Finally, the Boov arrive at earth, and take over in fairly short order. There are no death rays here; they simply whisk people out of their homes using bubbles and giant vacuum cleaners and summarily displace the human population to a gigantic settlement in Australia, filled with all of the things that Captain Smek thinks will pacify them, like amusement parks and candy.

The Boov then begin the process of resettling yet again, and one of them, a particularly unloved Boov named Oh (Jim Parsons), who also happens to be completely clueless as to his unpopularity, tries to throw his neighbors a party. Unfortunately, he ends up sending the message all the way across the galaxy to everyone within "earshot," including the Gorg. Oh ends up on the run from the rest of the Boov, and runs into Tip (Rihanna) a girl who happens to be the sole human to escape "relocation." Tip has a car, and Oh has knowledge of Boov tech, which basically means the ability to make things fly. They strike up a deal to find Tip's mom (Jennifer Lopez), though unbeknownst to Top, Oh secretly plans to flee to Antarctica. The friendship that inevitably blossoms between them, however, might prove to change everything, even the fate of the world.

While this movie hardly the most cleverly written film in Dreamworks' library, which stretches back nearly two decades, it is reasonably entertaining, and quite notably makes the best use of the studio's considerable technical prowess in a long time by providing the viewer with some of the most colorful visuals seen in a Dreamworks' movie since 2013's The Croods.

As far as offering compelling characters goes, though, the movie falls sadly short of the better DWA movies like Kung Fu Panda or How to Train Your Dragon. The film tries to establish Boov as lonely but only succeeds in making him as unlikable to me as he was to his fellow Boov. The filmmakers do well enough to establish how and why Tip is, like Oh, lonely and in need of a friend, but apart from giving her adorable curls and Rihanna's voice there is not much else to her. Also, it was hard for me to separate Rihanna from her onscreen avatar considering that her songs came blaring over the movie's soundtrack every five minutes. It was quite annoying.

All that said, though, I still find myself recommending this film because it is just...so...pretty. Animated films in general are very colorful affairs, but this movie, I daresay, really stands out, even in a market that's been saturated with computer-generated cartoons, many of them from this very studio. It is guaranteed entertainment for kids under twelve (my two daughters, both below ten, had a good time, while thirteen-year-old son groaned at every Rihanna song, just as I did), so it has that, but even as a cynical adult, I was able to enjoy this feast for the eyes.

6/10