Review: DreamWorks’ Home, an Endearing and Enjoyable Family Film

I don’t know about anyone else, but I found the marketing lead up to this film to be quite the emotional roller coaster. At first, I was intrigued by the premise and pleased to hear DreamWorks Animation was making a movie with a female protagonist of color. Then I was underwhelmed by the simplistic design of the aliens. Then I was charmed by the banter in the first trailer while being put off by the bathroom humor in the second. It is, therefore, with considerable relief I report that, yes, sometimes first impressions are spot on and Home is an absolute delight.

Now, my opinion may have been skewed slightly by the number of small children in my theater but watching Home was a joyous experience. I’ll restrain myself and divulge as little of the plot as possible because part of what made the story so engaging was how little I knew about it going in, having not read the book, The True Meaning of Smekday (having actually forgotten there was a book until the opening credits). For example, the movie opens with an event hinted at in the trailers which I assumed wouldn’t take place until the end of the second act, if at all. So, five minutes in, the movie already had me hooked and wondering where it was going next.

Major plot details aside, the movie centers around a girl named Gratuity “Tip” Tucci and an alien named Oh who set out for Paris in a flying car. Quite simply, it is their characterizations and their dynamic together that make Home the movie it is. Tip is a great heroine, resourceful, smart and realistic both in terms of body proportions and personality (“7th grade girls are mean,” she says at one point). Her struggles as an immigrant from Barbados are only briefly addressed but they’re handled well and strengthen the movie’s theme that the desire for a home (ahem) and sense of belonging is universal. As for Oh… what can I say? DreamWorks Animation has mastered animating adorable would-be monsters. Oh’s facial expressions, gesticulations, and emotionally informed coloring (he changes color with his mood) paired with Jim Parsons’ excellent voice work create an endearing character worth ranking alongside other DreamWorks creatures like Toothless and Megamind.

Home certainly belongs on the lighter end of the tonal spectrum for animated films. It’s not as thematically complex or emotionally mature as a Laika film but neither is it the sort of pop-culture referencing sugar rush that gave DreamWorks Animation such a bad rep for so long. The writing is clever, funny, and tender, by turns, and sprinkled with bits of dialogue that parents could use to start conversations with their kids, particularly Oh’s concept of Sad-Mad, an emotion he coins while trying to understand that Tip lashes out at him because she misses her mom. The word resurfaces at the end to explain another character’s behavior in a twist that, while predictable, plays right into my love for monsters-need-to-be-understood premises and made me go:

I wouldn’t quite say Home is the sort of film that stays with you long after you’ve left the theater but it is thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyable, and not in the shallow, mindless sense of the word. If you’re looking for a family friendly movie to make you laugh and go “aww,” go see this. Take your kids or your friends, or whomever you have at hand, or, hey, go by yourself. You’ll thank me.

Petra Halbur is an undergraduate at Hofstra University pursuing a BA in journalism and presently trapped in the world-building phase of writing her science-fantasy novel. You can read more from her at Ponderings of a Cinephile or follow her on Twitter.

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