5 Reasons Home Might Be the Season's Best Kids Movie

Home represents the multifaceted pop star's debut voicing an animated film, but she also is responsible for much of the soundtrack. "I really enjoyed working closely with Tim Johnson and music producers Stargate to ensure that, lyrically and musically, the songs were exactly what were needed for a given scene."

In one of the movie's more memorable sequences, Rihanna's "Dancing in the Dark" comes on, and Oh tries his hardest to resist the temptation to dance. Alas, he's overcome by the beat, and he and Rihanna's character, Tip, share a heartwarming and very human moment of friendship.

"Rihanna is two people in Home," said producer Suzanne Buirgy. "She's the actress voicing a 12-year-old and the incredible music superstar. She expresses much of the humor and emotion via song."

At the forefront of the action-packed animated flick is the dynamic duo of Oh and Tip. While Oh's species (the Boov) is invading the only home that Tip has ever known, a friendship between these two seems highly unlikely. Alas, they realize that their power is greater together than separately, and a great partnership (and friendship) develops.

This serves as a strong reminder to viewers (kids and adults alike) that friendships can be found in the most unassuming of places and that we shouldn't rule a person out on account of their differences.

The movie is centered around the alien species known as the Boov invading Earth, and DreamWorks manages to convey this without it being too alarming or realistic for young viewers. Once the millions of Boovian spaceships have landed, we're taken on a global journey (with the Eiffel Tower, aka "The Great Antenna," serving as their command center). "It's a huge, beautiful set," said Buirgy. "We wanted the world to look altered by the Boov, without it looking scary."

Johnson employed DreamWorks' new technology, Apollo, to create the film. The most noticeable difference of the new platform, Johnson said, is the ability to zoom in on character's faces, and to express subtlety in a way that was previously impossible. "It was very empowering as a director to be able to do what I think audiences loved: get very intimate with the characters," he said.

As a member of the hive-minded Boovian species, Oh has been conditioned to value conformity. "The Boov ignore one another, and they don't have friends, neighbors, or family," said Johnson of the fictional creatures. But Oh is different. He longs for connection and feels out of place among his "people." And who hasn't felt at least a little bit out of place at some point in their life? Jim Parsons, the voice of Oh, shared his personal experience: "I always had friends, and there was always a group I felt left out of at the same time . . . which maybe, that's normal. Maybe that was my real middle-of-the-road way of being. I have friends — and yet, I'm still missing out."

As a recent immigrant from Barbados (just like Rihanna), Tip can empathize with a similar sense of feeling out of place. "I have felt like an outsider ever since my first day at school," Rihanna shared. "I mean, I think that's really it. When you're at home, you have this sense of comfort. You belong. It's familiar. It is you. And not until you leave your home and you have to be in another environment supervised by completely different people and around different children who come from different homes, and you're immediately exposed to all these types of things . . . because just as strange as they are to you, you are to them."

It's a feeling that every child will experience at some point, and one that Home promises will resolve itself (because it will!).

Throughout the movie, we come to realize that it's not necessarily a physical destination that Oh and Tip are in search of; it's a sense of belonging. Each of the movie's stars shared their definitions of what "home" means to them:

Steve Martin: "Home is the emotional place where you feel like you're not away from it."

Rihanna: "It's wherever I feel safest, really. Anything and anywhere that feels familiar and comfortable is home."

Jim Parsons: "It's where you feel unjudged and where what I do isn't necessarily stupid or wrong."

And what parent wouldn't want to take their kids to see something centered around these themes? See what the buzz is all about in the trailer ahead.