More derivative than you expect from DreamWorks, which has delivered originals like Shrek, How to Train a Dragon and Kung Fu Panda, Home borrows from alien/child buddy movies such as E.T. and Lilo and Stitch, and hits hard the message that no matter how unique (read: quirky misfit) you are, there's a home for all of us.
Before donning cheap plastic 3-D glasses was considered de rigueur and when artists still prided themselves on drawing images by hand, Disney made a brave move and released the two-dimensional “Lilo & Stitch” in 2002—just as the computerized revolution that began with “ Toy Story ” and continued with “ Shrek ” and “ Ice Age ” was about to make such non-CG cartoon titles nearly obsolete.
The character design is a bit questionable, particularly the humans, but humans have been the Achilles' heel of DreamWorks/PDI animated features for as long as they've existed, and the ones in Home are no more stiff and soullessly robotic than the ones in Megamind or Turbo , and quite a great deal less so than the shuffling corpses of the Shrek films.
Home , the latest animated feature from Dreamworks Animation, producers of the Shrek , Madagascar , and How to Train Your Dragon franchises, might seem at first a rather bland kids' movie.
“Home” should rack up decent box-office coin but the question of repeat business, which is how DreamWorks built its studio with “Shrek” and “How to Train Your Dragon,” is uncertain.