There's nothing particularly new or fancy about Dreamworks' latest animated affair. There are no breathtaking action sequences like in their How To Train Your Dragon and Kung-Fu Panda franchises. Nor is there the amount of laughs you'll find in their classics Megamind or, again, the Kung-Fu Panda films. Yet there's something so utterly sweet and innocent about Home that it zooms by with an enchanting charm. When people tell you to calm down by going to your happy place, it probably looks something like this. It's arguably the most child-centric movie Dreamworks have produced for a few years too. The adult-targeted humour is kept to a minimum and the physical comedy is amped up to levels that is normally irritating but here works an absolute treat. Its success can be attributed, in a big way, to the lovable alien Oh (Jim Parsons). A clumsy go-getter with endearing optimism, cuddly colour-changing looks, and amusing speech patterns, Oh steals the spotlight whenever he is on screen, which is about 95% of the time. As his plucky partner in adventure, Tip, Rihanna's precocious human child is fairly stock standard, whilst Steve Martin's dim-witted leader of Oh's Boov race lands a few hilarious moments among some dull ones. Vibrant, energetic and with an unexpected tear-jerking finale, Home falls on the right side of simple.

This was one of those kids movies that moved along at an entertaining pace and kept the adults interested as well. The humor is generally light but consistent and the soundtrack to this film was actually pretty cool too (Rihanna and Jennifer Lopez, providing voices to two of the characters, sing some of the danceable tunes on the soundtrack). Jim Parsons is great as Oh, the misfit alien who just wants to make friends but comes up short in the ranks of his regimented, antisocial species. Steve Martin also lends his voice as the hilarious but clueless leader of Oh's people, who decide Earth looks like a nice place to live, despite the little fact that it already has a native population (us). The forced relocation of the human population to "happy human towns" results in Tip (Rihanna) going on a quest to find her lost mom (Lopez) is the gist of this sweetly funny movie and it's worth seeing, kids and adults alike.

"Home" is a terribly misguided CGI movie from Dreamworks. While it could have been a nice film featuring a black protagonist (a first for this sort of movie),instead it's simply a chore start to finish to watch unless you are too young to realize you're watching crap! The film is extremely colorful (to the point of being a bit garish) but the CGI is nice...but the story and characters are about as welcome as gum disease!

When the film begins, the 'nice' aliens, the Boov, come to Earth and kidnap all the humans and drop them in a tiny portion of the globe and keep the rest for themselves. This might have worked if the Boov were supposed to be malevolent and evil...but they are supposed to be kind of charming! Well, they aren't very nice at all and they speak in a backwards/mixed up manner that immediately becomes tedious.

Somehow in this new hellish Earth, the Boov missed one...a young girl voiced by an adult. She meets up with THE most annoying Boov and they have adventures. Adventures with the most annoying character from a selfish and jerk-ish race...what's not to love?!! Well, pretty much everything. The bottom line is that the characters are unlikable and the way they talk simply annoying...and after a while I simply had to stop because the film was unwatchable for anyone older than about 4 or 5. Awful...and inexplicably bad.