Aliens
are invading, humans are rounded up and heroes are on the run. Yet this
potentially apocalyptic sci-fi scenario becomes a heartfelt comedic adventure
in the animated film Home.
Directed
by Tim Johnson (Over the Hedge), the movie (out March 27, 2015) stars
three-time Emmy winner Jim Parsons as the voice of a little purple alien named
Oh. Pop singer Rihanna is Oh's new human friend Tip, and comedian Steve Martin
is the beleaguered Captain Smek, who's trying to find a hospitable home for Oh
and his fellow Boov after they were run off their own planet.
Cinematic
alien invasions tend toward the dark, yet Home gave Johnson an opportunity to
flip the genre and tell the story from the newcomers' point of view while
holding "a funhouse mirror up to our own culture."
"The attitude the aliens have is that
they're doing us such a great favor and they will be so good for us primitive
natives,'' says Johnson. "I liked the arrogance of that and also the
social commentary on all of us humans."
DISCOVER:
More sneak peeks from USA TODAY
MORE:
USA TODAY's guide to summer movies
When
Oh and Tip meet, they find they're both outsiders among their own species. Oh
gets in so much trouble he has to flee his fellow Boov, and 12-year-old Tip is
still adjusting to her new Midwestern home with her mother after growing up in
the Caribbean.
Oh,
whose mangled English comes mainly from watching a lot of TV, promises to help
Tip find her parent since all the adults have been taken to a huge theme park
the Boov built called Happy Humans Town. "They've studied us and know what
we want," says Johnson.
They
end up with both of them running for their lives, Parsons says. "It really
turns into a very odd buddy road movie. She's hostile toward him and he
considers her basically a savage, and as they go, they realize they have more
and more in common."
Even
though Oh looks down at humanity at first, "you don't pull away ...
because Jim is capable of such great warmth," Johnson says of the Big Bang
Theory star. "You root for this character t to really become a human."
Home
marks Rihanna's first animated-movie role — and one of just a few acting gigs
on her résumé. However, Johnson found she was at home pouring her soul out in a
recording studio.
"The microphone has been her partner her
whole career," says the director, who notes that Rihanna easily found the
voice of a girl on the cusp of being a teenager.
"Tip's had to be very scrappy and live
on her own, so she's had to be a grown-up. But of course she desperately needs
her mom, like every little kid."
Martin's
Smek is inspired by goofier James Bond villains. Still, the alien leader is
"a villain you're rooting to be converted by the end."
Parsons
and Martin had their own unexpected visitor last fall when President Obama took
a tour of the DreamWorks animation studio and watched them record a scene.
With
Secret Service folk and others "running all over like really intelligent
mice," Parsons says he found it impossible to say anything with the
president around. "All the entertainment business things I've done, that
felt the most like I had entered a movie myself."
The
actor did find him cool in every way, though, with Obama being interested in
his little Oh.
"He didn't seem awkward at all,"
Parsons says. "And I guess that's good — as leader of the free world, it's
important that you feel pretty at ease with all different types of people and
situations."
0 التعليقات :
Post a Comment