It generally doesn’t take much to keep the little ones entertained, and critics say if that’s all you’re looking for, Home will probably do the trick. Just don’t expect anything you haven’t seen before. Jim Parsons voices Oh, a banished alien troublemaker, who befriends a girl named Tip (Rihanna) in search of her mother. With a larger alien threat looming on the horizon, will Tip and Oh succeed in helping each other find what they’re looking for? The pundits say Home is diverting enough, but its familiar plotting too often evokes the better films from which it clearly draws much of its inspiration. (Watch our video interview with Rihanna, Parsons, and co-star Steve Martin, and click here to see our gallery of the weirdest aliens from film and TV.)
Plenty of big-screen comedies traffic in taboo subject matter, but sometimes satirical aims give way to offensive overindulgence. Critics say Get Hard isn’t funny enough to make its jokes about racism and prison rape palatable, though its talented cast is good for a few moments of inspiration. Will Ferrell stars as James King, an investment banker who gets a lengthy prison sentence on trumped-up charges of financial misdeeds. To prepare himself for life in the slammer, King hires Darnell (Kevin Hart) to teach him the ropes, paying little mind to the fact that Darnell is a law-abiding carwash owner. The pundits say Get Hard largely squanders an interesting idea and its talented leads on juvenile bits of dated, if not offensive, humor.
It Follows goes wide this weekend after earning rave reviews — and generating plenty of shudders — in its limited run. Maika Monroe stars as a suburban Michigan teen who becomes infected with a malevolent spirit after a sexual encounter, and it won’t stop pursuing her until she gives it to someone else — or dies. The pundits say It Follows is thought-provoking, clever, and properly terrifying, making it one of the best horror flicks to emerge in the past few years.
