Home follows the adventures of Oh (Jim Parsons), an outcast among the Boov, an alien race running from the menacing Gorg. Led by Captain Smek (Steve Martin), the Boov arrive on Earth to make it their new home. They relocate every human to these concentrated settlements in the middle of nowhere and take over the major cities. Oh gets in trouble when he accidentally sends out a message that reveals the location of the Boov. While running from his fellow Boov, Oh encounters Tip (Rihanna), a young human girl who managed to escape relocation. Oh agrees to help Tip find her mother, hoping that he can also find a way to fix his mistake.
Home never really finds its narrative groove. It takes a little too long for the two main characters to meet, and when they do the story hardly gains any momentum. The film spends a little too much time keeping the two characters at odds when there are problems to be solved. The middle part of the movie is largely made up of the two characters bouncing around a bunch of locations with a barely defined purpose. It does often feel like the movie is just stalling for time, filling empty narrative space with empty incident.
The film finally picks up in the back end, when the themes finally emerge. The final sequences don't quite mesh with the rest of the movie, but the third act offers some welcome emotional punch. It puts aside the silliness a little bit and has the main characters make choices that actually seem to matter. The final twist isn’t very difficult to predict, but the film still gets points the eventual execution. It reverts to silliness in the end, but for a brief moment the movie gives audiences something real to hold on to.
For the rest of its runtime the film is content with being cute. Its humor stems mainly from the alien characters being unfamiliar with the way things are done on Earth. And so Smek wears a grill on his head, and Oh is horrified at how his body reacts to dancing. It's all well and good, but there isn't a whole lot to it. The film mainly keeps up the energy through its frantic, colorful visuals. The movie's bright color palette makes almost everything look like it was made out of candy. And it creates stark contrast when the Gorg is in screen.
Jim Parsons plays a variation of his Sheldon character from The Big Bang Theory. It is a capable vocal performance, but the role is more reliant on the awkward turns of phrase. Rihanna delivers a nice turn as Tip, the fierceness of the singer coming through the candy colored visuals. The best vocal performance comes from Steve Martin, whose Smek is a consistently entertaining piece of deluded megalomania. Overall, the vocal work is charming, if not entirely memorable.
Home is competent, but it feels like an underachiever. Its source material, Adam Rex’s book The True Meaning of Smekday, is far more charming and inventive. It feels like the film really set out to smooth out all of the interesting wrinkles of the source novel, running from the implied darkness in order to provide yet another candy colored piece of inoffensive entertainment. Younger kids will certainly enjoy the confused antics of the lead alien, but it seems unlikely that the film will grow to be beloved and remembered in the years to come.
My Rating:
