Home: Film Review

Home: Film Review

Vocal cast: Jim Parsons, Rihanna, Steve Martin, Jennifer Lopez
Director: Tim Johnson

The fact an email nearly causes the end of the world in Home, the full length film based on the book and extended out from the short that played before the release of Peabody and Mr Sherman, should come as no surprise to anyone who's had Outlook issues.

Jim Parsons is perfectly cast as Oh, a little purple alien of the race known as the Boov. The Boov is a race which is constantly on the run, always searching for a new place to call home thanks to their race being threatened.

When the Boov arrive and relocate the entire Earth populace, one human is left behind - Tip (Rihanna). But Oh inadvertently sets in chain of events which see the bad guys coming to threaten their new Utopia - on the run, Oh meets Tip and the pair work together to try and save the day...

Essentially, Home's central character is the Big Bang Theory's Sheldon Cooper shrunk down to size into one colourful mini-blimp. Sheldon's penchant for taking things literally and annoying those around him has been transposed into Oh and magnified.

Parsons breathes a limited life into the little blob with curious syntax that younger kids may find endearing and amusing in equal parts, though one suspects if you're a Big Bang Theory watcher, you've already seen his schtick.

There's also an overuse of music to punctuate scenes, manipulate people into feeling and also encouraging you to buy the latest music from both JLo and Rihanna, who both appear in the film.

Occasionally, as well, the film stutters to an end with natural conclusions to the arcs showing up - but bizarrely, those endings signify even more beginnings to new threads, leading to the feeling of a lack of coherence all the way through.

The animation is pretty standard all the way through with nice hues of blues and purples setting parts of the screen alight and the tale of the misfits banding together gives somewhat of a diverting thrill to the younger end of the audience.

The problem with Home is that it doesn't proffer anything up that feels new and exciting; it feels somewhat formulaic and perhaps not mined for as much pathos and heart as it could have been.

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