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Review: Jim Parsons' 'Home' not exactly out of this world

 
Oh, voiced by Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory), and Tip, voiced by Rihanna, get close in Home.
Oh, voiced by Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory), and Tip, voiced by Rihanna, get close in Home.
Published March 25, 2015

Home is where my heart wasn't Saturday morning, at a screening where even children didn't seem excited to be. The father snoring next to me had the right idea at the wrong volume. Hiding a catnap behind 3-D glasses only works if you don't give yourself away.

Staying awake behind mine, I saw that Home was like a drab dream with squirmy-cuddly aliens, floating space bubbles and too many Rihanna musical interludes. It's the kind of fantasy that not even Steve Martin can make funny, much less Jim Parsons and his Big Bang nerd squeals.

Parsons voices Oh, a misfit among the conformist Boovs, a squatty, tentacled species of space cowards ruled by Smek (Martin). The Boovs seek a new home planet to hide from the deadly Gorg, and Earth looks promising. In the nicest alien invasion ever, humans are vacuumed up and transported to model home concentration camps, while Boovs move into their urban dwellings.

One human escapes detection, a spunky girl named Gratuity Tucci (Rihanna), but friends call her Tip. She's discovered by Oh, who's on the lam himself after mistakenly sending a party invitation to the universe, including the Gorg. The two forge an uneasy alliance to find her mom and his password to cancel the invitation.

Home is harmless, though, aside from teasing us with completion twice before actually ending. It goes through the regular paces, including the apparent death of a key character but, yay, he or she is alive! Elementary lessons are learned both ways, and if you think Tip won't find her mom, you're wrong. Like every other cliched moment in Home, Rihanna has a song for that.

Contact Steve Persall at spersall@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8365. Follow @StevePersall.