The sun is starting to shine, so what better way to spend time with your kids than taking them into a dark room to sit in front of a screen for two hours?
Your child drags you along to the theaters because they want to be entertained by a cute purple alien and watch him get into crazy adventures with a little girl. Seems harmless; but my heart goes out to the parents, who I could sense were horribly bored. My heart also goes out to the kids, who were just as bored, it seemed.
As I sat down and watched families come in, I jotted down these questions: Is it wrong to be critical of a kids film? Should I, as an adult, expect too much from a kids film? Is that a valid criticism when nothing is being presented? Does it really matter?
I was expecting that this little purple alien named Oh, voiced by Jim Parsons from “The Big Bang Theory,” would make a nice, simple friendship with Gratuity Tucci, voiced by Rihanna. I thought that it would be an E.T.-esque story, as if the little alien was trying to go home, like the name of this movie would suggest. I could not have been more wrong.
What seems to be inspired by E.T. and Star Trek turns into a convoluted disaster, almost immediately.
I was so confused in the first twenty minutes, and I can more than imagine that kids in the audience were twice as confused as I was; but just when I'm trying to figure out the story and the direction it wants to take, the animators tried to do so much at once that it lost control. It took so long for things to slow down and take a breather. It was animation-overload, and I had a headache. It was like trying to look at the fine details of a speeding train zooming past you. My brain went numb.
When the movie finally slowed down, it felt nice to look at the impressive detail, but those moments were few and far between. In those few moments, there were good themes about isolation, wanting to make friends and trying to do the impossible. Kids can more than relate to that. It was just unfortunate that there is no fun in this movie.
“Home” tried so hard to be funny and nobody was laughing. I am surprised there were no fussy kids in the audience. They were just waiting for something fun to happen. It arrives toward the end, sure, but it's not worth going to the theaters for it. This is the kind of movie you rent from Red Box.
The final, unfortunate thing is that this is all Dreamworks has to offer this year. “Kung Fu Panda 3” was pushed to 2016, and another project, “Boo,” was also delayed. It's shocking to watch Dreamworks release masterpieces like “How to Train Your Dragon” (1 and 2) and then turn around and shovel this out.
After the movie, I watched the credits, and I was amazed at how many people worked on this. There were so many artists, technical directors, animators, and producers that it was no mystery how they lost focus and turned it into an annoying mess. So, when your kid says to you, “Let's go watch 'Home'!”, tell them, “Let's watch E.T. instead.”

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