Perhaps I should start off this review of sorts with the disclaimer that the only other movie I’ve seen in the Elmhurst, Illinois York Theater is Frozen. I saw it Thanksgiving of last year, after my parents and sisters gave it rave reviews upon seeing it in Montana. I saw it with my cousins, and was rather surprised at how much I enjoyed it. And I really rather enjoyed it.
Now, when I went with those same cousins over the weekend to see the new Dreamworks movie Home, I did know that it was rather unrealistic to expect the same sort of sensation that Frozen was. However, I generally enjoy animated films, especially ones aimed at children. They’re cute, usually funny and always have a happy ending. They don’t make me think too much, which is nice sometimes.
Home, however, was a bit of a disappointment. On some level, it was trying a bit too hard to be the kind of sensation that Frozen and Despicable Me were and I think it almost goes without saying that those aren’t necessarily the types of things that can just be created. They kind of just have to happen.
Before I get too far into what I didn’t like, I should say I enjoyed parts of the movie. The writing for the “Boov” characters was particularly strong and Jim Parsons’ role as “Oh” was rather hilarious. The fact that the Boovs couldn’t not dance to the repeated Rihanna songs was kind of funny, and the ending confrontation with the Gorb was a nice way to twist the traditional narrative.
Still, when I left the movie, it felt like the entire thing was staged to give Rihanna access to a whole new demographic of fans. She performs three of the eight songs on the soundtrack, voices the main human character, and her song is the only one that is repeated throughout the movie. That last fact was probably the most annoying part about the whole experience.
Overall, Home was a movie that proved to me that what Frozen had was something particularly special. Over Christmas break, my uncle (who has an almost-two-year-old daughter) commented that what was really amazing about Frozen was that it could be enjoyable for the two-year-old, for the four-year-old, for the ten-year-old, for the twenty-year-old and even for the thirty-year-old.
It was a movie that was enjoyable, even for the parents who went to see it for their children. While this enjoyment may not have the lasting power that it has for the two-year-old (my uncle has probably seen Frozen every night for the last six months), it does exist. And this is what Disney does particularly well. They manage to make movies that can appeal to a wide-range of demographics, so that parents don’t necessarily mind taking their children to them. But they also captivate young children in a way that makes their movies almost instantaneously classic. Watching Home, I realized that this was not something every production company has mastered.
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Images: 1, 2 (provided by author), 3, 4 (provided by author)