Home
Director: Tim Johnson
Starring: Jim Parsons, Rihanna, Steve Martin
94 mins; Class U;
KRS Releasing Ltd
Oh (voiced by The Big Bang Theory’s Jim Parsons) and his people, the Boov, are an odd-looking, benign and somewhat cowardly alien race.
They are forever on the run from their greatest enemy, the Gorg. The next safe haven in their sights is planet Earth where they settle after transferring all humans to different parts of the planet.
Home is a colourful, if rather unsubstantial, take on the post-apocalyptic alien invasion. Only, this time the story is aimed at kids – although these aliens wouldn’t know how to say ‘boo’ to a goose and there is never any real sense of peril despite the looming presence of Gorg and his gargantuan mother ship.
It is a film full of colourful characters –in more ways than one. One of the funniest traits of the Boovians is their penchant of changing colour to match their emotions (yellow for fear, red for anger and blue for sadness).
The Boovs themselves are rather squat little critters with six tiny little legs and despite the fact on first meeting them there is little cute or cuddly about them, they do admittedly grow on you.
The film boasts solid work from its voice-cast, especially from Parsons who does most of the heavy lifting with his work on Oh (called so because anyone that encounters him rolls their eyes and sighs “oh”!)
This is a character that can admittedly become a tad annoy-ing with his unwavering positivity and penchant for making mis-takes but with Parsons’ interpretation comes some genuine warmth and feeling.
Rihanna tones down the vocal gymnastics to give a sympathetic rendering of the young feisty Tip, while Steve Martin is the voice behind the Boov’s pompous leader Captain Smek with Jennifer Lopez voicing Tip’s mother Lucy.
Home will undoubtedly entice the younger audience with its brightly-coloured characters, their somewhat engaging speech patterns, overall silly behaviour and the madcap adventures they get up to and will forgive the film its inherent flaws.