Home

The trailers for kids films really need work. Every time I see one, I am turned off by it. It’s only because you wonderful people are willing to read my reviews that I actually go to see them and find out that they’re not that bad.

Home‘s trailer suggests that it is the story of a cute, dumb alien, named Oh, who is on the run from those of his own race because he has made too many clumsy errors with the help from a teenage girl.

This piece of advertising doesn’t actually show the important element that Oh’s race takes over the planet somehow out of cowardice and the girl is looking for her relocated mother with Oh’s help.

Girl, how can you smile when your entire planet is under the control of millions of squid things?

Computer Animation, in the years since Toy Story, has become the norm for family films. To be honest, I have to agree with a number of people who are sad at the decline in popularity of hand-drawn and stop-motion animation. But, when put into the hands of the good men and women at Dreamworks Animation, computers can capture motion like nothing else.

This movie looks great. Superb use of depth of field, the world is imaginative and the way the characters move feels alive.

The writing is really quite good as well, reminiscent of The Lego Movie at times. The Boove, the alien race, speaks in a way that is totally grammatically incorrect and their incompetence, cowardice and all around lack of understanding over the situation makes for some excellent comic foils.

Oh, played by Jim Parsons, is quite a good hero for a family film. Cute, friendly and an idiot, he’s everything I looked up to as a kid.

The girl, while she can be a little too positive at time, considering the Earth has been defeated in one day by purple morons, she isn’t annoying and she has her dramatic moments.

Speaking of drama, this movie does it good but not great. A couple of moments hit me with some “feels”. However, others were ruined by the soundtrack.

The problem I have is that not that the songs are bad. They are pretty decent and they fit the particular mood they’re going for. I have problems with them for two reasons. The first being that it will significantly date this movie down the line and that the studios know this and keep the songs in anyway because the kids love them just now.

Secondly, they really distract you. It’s like the Phil Collins songs from a few disney movies in the early 2000’s. If you’re like me, you can’t watch Tarzan without seeing the former lead singer of Genesis swinging from the trees. I would happily listen to the songs from Home in my own time. I just couldn’t concentrate on the drama they were trying to get across at the time when they repeated the same song from before.

Speaking of singing, Rhianna provided her voice for the girl and does a pretty good job at hiding her extra few years she has on her character.

So what does Home teach our kids? It teaches not to judge people too much on past mistakes, because everyone makes them, not to judge someone by their appearance. These are worthwhile lessons for kids to learn. If you have kids, this is actually a pretty good film to see.

If you don’t, you may not quite enjoy it as much. A number of the jokes are more meant for the adults to get, but I believe that the overall feel of this movie, with its poppy soundtrack, over-explaining of dramatic moments and general optimistic view of alien attack, I’d say this is one for our kids.

Recommended Scenario: If you think your kids are too young to watch apocalyptic visions of the world in the vain of The Road.

If what I have written tells you that you would like this film, you can book tickets to see it at your local Cineworld here.