2/5 Home For months now, due to rescheduled release date, a tiny purple squid with Jim Parsons’ voice has charmed us all with dancing and exclamations of “My hands are in the air like I just do not care.” It’s funny because he expanded the contraction. Get it? As a one-off gag in a trailer, it works. Watch a whole movie where the main character speaks in nothing but these misunderstandings of the English language, and it becomes one of the most annoying experiences of your life. Remember in Cloud Atlas when Tom Hanks calling things the “true true”? Get ready to hear Parsons apologize by saying “I am saying the sorry to you.” I think these childlike language mistakes are supposed to be endearing, but I cannot think of anything more maddening. The problems do not start with the alien’s adverb and article adjective errors, though. It’s the core greediness that spawned a film like this in the first place. Dreamworks strike gold every now and then (How to Train Your Dragon 2, Shrek); but more times than not, they choose to latch on to fads. Home feels like it was created just to bank off the wave of minion love. Those twinkle-shaped, gibberish-speaking cronies, first seen in Despicable Me, are more than capable of holding their own story. We shall see for sure in a few short months. Believe me, the cowardly aliens in Home, known as Boov, are half as fun and twice as agitating. | Director: Tim Johnson Starring: Jim Parsons, Rhianna, Jennifer Lopez, Steve Martin Writers: Tom J. Astle & Matt Ember |
And so we meet Oh (Parsons), a clumsy alien loathed by all. His name draws from the sound his “friends” - and you by movie’s end - make when he shows up. The Boov are known throughout the galaxy for being cowardly. They arrive to Earth, relocate the humans, and claim the planet as their new home. All is well, until Oh transmits a message that informs their enemies of their location.
The second, and slightly less annoying, half of the story involves Tip (Rihanna) and her quest to find her mother (Jennifer Lopez) in the wake of human relocation. Tip and Oh unite and realize that they need each other to complete their goals. It all sounds like topsy-turvy fun - literally so in a surprisingly entertaining scene involving the Eiffel Tower - but it is painfully droll.
When a film enlists Steve Martin and still fails to generate any laughs, you know something is wrong. The problems do not start with Oh’s inability to use adverbs or article adjectives correctly, but with the film’s core greediness. Rihanna is hot right now, call her up. I doubt her upcoming album, which I am anticipating, will be appropriate for the Home audience. Everyone seems to think that everything spoken by Jim Parsons is automatically hilarious, so let’s get him too. I’ve already mentioned the minion envy. Even with a climax that is actually quiet emotional, I could not buy into the appeal. Would the absence of Oh’s increasingly annoying dialogue have helped? Yeah, maybe a little. The only time I got excited was when I realized Oh’s “friend” Kyle was voiced by Badger from Breaking Bad. Bring in some Skinny Pete action, and I might have bumped this up to a 2.5.
The second, and slightly less annoying, half of the story involves Tip (Rihanna) and her quest to find her mother (Jennifer Lopez) in the wake of human relocation. Tip and Oh unite and realize that they need each other to complete their goals. It all sounds like topsy-turvy fun - literally so in a surprisingly entertaining scene involving the Eiffel Tower - but it is painfully droll.
When a film enlists Steve Martin and still fails to generate any laughs, you know something is wrong. The problems do not start with Oh’s inability to use adverbs or article adjectives correctly, but with the film’s core greediness. Rihanna is hot right now, call her up. I doubt her upcoming album, which I am anticipating, will be appropriate for the Home audience. Everyone seems to think that everything spoken by Jim Parsons is automatically hilarious, so let’s get him too. I’ve already mentioned the minion envy. Even with a climax that is actually quiet emotional, I could not buy into the appeal. Would the absence of Oh’s increasingly annoying dialogue have helped? Yeah, maybe a little. The only time I got excited was when I realized Oh’s “friend” Kyle was voiced by Badger from Breaking Bad. Bring in some Skinny Pete action, and I might have bumped this up to a 2.5.