Stay Home from latest DreamWorks movie

DreamWorks, the company that produced popular and critical favorites Chicken Run and Shrek, drafts an all-star squad of voice actors and graphics artists, but a lackluster playbook drives the Home team into the ground.

Home (rated PG for mild action and some rude humor) opens with the Boovs, an alien population, fleeing their home planet and taking over Earth. The Boovs relocate all humans to a large amusement park in Australia. Oh (voiced by The Big Bang Theory star Jim Parsons) accidentally texts the location of the Boovs’ new digs to their mortal enemies, the Gorgs, who make a beeline for Earth. Oh goes on the lam when angry Boov leader Captain Smek (Steve Martin) orders his arrest. He runs into Tip (pop music star Rihanna, in her first animated film), who has managed to avoid capture and relocation. Oh and Tip work past prejudices and fear of each other, banding together to search for Tip’s mother, Lucy (Jennifer Lopez), under the looming threat of a Gorgian invasion.

DreamWorks might have been hoping to trade in on the popularity of Olaf, the jocular snowman in Disney’s Frozen. Oh emulates Olaf’s goofy optimism—and might even be a first-syllable namesake—but has only humorless, puerile material to work with. Even wild and crazy guy Steve Martin cannot animate the dull dialogue.

Both Rihanna and Lopez perform on the soundtrack, which makes for a groovy listen if you tune out the clichéd lyrics: “Don’t look back, just carry on / And the shadows will never find you.” Most moviegoers, however, are unlikely to give Home’s unimaginative screenplay the same free pass.

The film fumbles opportunities for both comedy and drama and fails to connect with the audience. Reacting to only a few slapstick gags and potty jokes, the two dozen children at the showing I attended sat quietly throughout the 96-minute movie—perhaps the only reason to recommend it.