An animated film that is targeted towards young children should be colorful, with lots of movement and hopefully an outlandish character or two. Most importantly, though, it must have heart. It should tackle themes that are important to kids, and provide lessons that they can take away from the cinema and begin to apply to real life, not just in the way that they behave but also in the way that they understand the world around them.
Thankfully, the new DreamWorks animated film Home does just that. Amidst the bright colors and moving shapes, there is a very sweet subtext about dealing with mistakes, understanding other people’s feelings, and having the courage to speak up when you know someone or something is wrong.
Close Encounters of the Boov Kind
Home follows the misadventures of Oh (Jim Parsons), a member of the gelatinous and cowardly alien race known as the Boov, who, led by the moronic Captain Smeck (Steve Martin), are fleeing the wrath of the evil Gorg who are bent on their destruction. The Boov decide to settle on Earth. Thinking they are doing all the humans a favor, they scoop up the planet’s population and deposit them in Australia in order to repopulate the major cities.
Oh, being a constant misery to his fellow Boov, decides to have a housewarming party and accidently sends his E-vite to the Gorg, thus making him an enemy of the state. Fleeing prosecution, Oh stumbles across a young human girl named Tip (Rhianna), who is trying to find her mother Lucy (Jennifer Lopez) amidst all the relocated humans. The two of them forge an unlikely alliance but together they manage to spread friendship and tolerance throughout the universe.
Kids over the age of 10 need not apply
Home is most definitely a film for very young children. Anyone with kids over the age of ten should probably stick with DreamWorks’ previous animated films like the How to Train Your Dragon series. The colors are very bright and the voice acting is very, very broad. Despite eliciting a couple of chuckles from the parents, there is a lack of the usual pop culture references for the adults to plug into; but whether this is a boon or a shortcoming depends on one’s tolerance for such things.
The computer generated animation is beautiful and the action set pieces, especially one involving a gravity-defying Eiffel Tower, are decent but certainly not mind-blowing. The Boov are designed to be as adorable as possible, resembling the Minions from Despicable Me except that they change colour depending on their emotions, once again confirming the age bracket of the target audience.
Less a Big Bang, more a weak link
The voice acting is on the whole perfectly fine. Steve Martin is quite energetic and funny as the awful dictator Captain Smeck and Rhianna is able to approximate the attitude of a pre-teen girl well enough despite her voice sounding much older.
Then there is Jim Parsons. Better known as Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory, Parsons was obviously hired not only for the name recognition but also for his high-pitched nerdy whine which seems to go out of its way to completely ruin every scene. Parsons speaks loudly, as if he has been told that he needs to read his lines to someone who is blind and is ignorant and wrong-headed enough to think that this means they are also hard of hearing. Parsons‘s voice performance is evidence as to why actors trained in voice-over work will always be better than celebrities.
A sweet movie with a decent message
Despite Parsons’s attempt at completely derailing the picture, Home sneaks by on its charm. There is something very disarming about a children’s film that actually has something beneficial to say. There is an interesting thematic vein in Home which teaches that everyone makes mistakes, and it’s not just enough to identify these mistakes but to own up to them early when there is still time to fix them.
There is also an opportunity here for the film to teach kids about emotions, not only how to deal with them but how to identify some of the more subtle shades of the emotional spectrum. There are a couple of instances when characters are referred to as being “sad-mad” – meaning that if someone at first appears scary or unkind, it doesn’t automatically mean they are evil, only that they might be dealing with a profound sadness. This is a very positive message to convey to children and it is a good sign that it is being portrayed in a mainstream film.
Conclusion
Home is decent enough entertainment for kids because it doesn’t try too hard to be anything more than what it is. Except for Parsons, the voice acting is fair, with no one really trying to swing for the fences. Really, though, they don’t need to. The animation is of the usual high standard and there is a sweet subtext about tolerance and kindness that should hopefully resonate with its target audience, or at least sink in after a few re-watches (and, knowing young children, this will probably get re-watched several times).
With the Dragons series of films, DreamWorks were fast on their way to supplanting Pixar as the best animation studio around these days. Compared to that series, though, Home is still a minor entry in their canon, although it still possesses valuable life lessons.
So what did you think of Home? Are you a fan of DreamWorks’s films?
(top image source: 20th Century Fox)
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