A few fast facts: Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York are hall-of-fame classics in my house. Macaulay Culkin may be the greatest child actor that ever lived. And even though Home Alone 3 is like new Coke to cousin Fuller’s Pepsi, I still like that too. I haven’t bothered with Home Alone 4 or Home Alone: The Holiday Heist, under the presumption that ‘straight-to-DVD’ is DOA for any sequel; I understand in one of them Marv is played by French Stewart, and Kevin’s parents are separated, and I don’t need that in my life. But this Home Alone sequel, Home Sweet Home Alone, falls under the Disney banner (through 20th Century Fox), and comes to us via streaming on Disney+. I’ve seen a trailer, and it kind’ve sucks… I’m not sure why you’d remake Home Alone and be terrible at it when the original still holds up, and is a regular relevant reoccurrence at every Christmas holiday season. If this stinks worse than a rope soaked in kerosine, then I’ve got my pitchfork sharpened, ready to hunt down a monstrous disaster.
Jeff McKenzie (Rob Delaney) and Pam McKenzie (Ellie Kemper) are facing financial trouble and have to sell their house. When Jeff discovers that an antique doll he keeps in the closet is worth $200,000, it appears the kid he met at his open house has stolen it. Meet Max Mercer (Archie Yates); his cousins annoy him, so he decides to sleep in the garage the night before a massive family vacation, and is accidentally left behind, to be, home alone. At first, it rocks having the house to himself, but as Jeff and Pam start lurking around his house, talking about making a fortune off an ‘ugly kid’, Max believes they are coming to kidnap him, and must defend his home from these outside intruders. Home Sweet Home Alone is directed by Dan Mazer, and written by Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell, and before we even begin, do you really expect this to be anywhere near as good as the work of John Hughes and Chris Columbus?
When I heard the kid from Jojo Rabbit was cast in the new Kevin McCallister role, I thought, ‘that little blonde kid; great. I could see that working.’ Ah, but then to see it’s Jojo Rabbit’s sweet oblivious friend – not the first face I think about when I think competency and uncanny ingenuity safeguarding a home. How old is Jacob Tremblay these days; surely, he’d be your first fit for the role anyway, yah? Ah, he’s already 15; never mind. Oh well, I won’t pile on this kid (out of respect for Jake Lloyd, if anything); somebody hired him, and he’s not the only one in this movie not even close to the tip of the iceberg for how good his predecessors were. A few things to like about Home Sweet Home Alone; I enjoyed the repurposing of the Christmas songs and musical themes from Home Alone – I forgot how nostalgic and awesome they are for me. I’m glad this movie doesn’t go for a straight reproduction of Home Alone (like the ‘90s Psycho did to Hitchcock), and at least the content of Home Sweet Home Alone tries to stand on its own two feet, wobbling around like a giraffe’s first steps, as it goes. It incorporates a more ‘Christian’ purpose for Jeff and Pam breaking and entering, but I think it’s just trying to get a leg-up on the Disney model of sympathising with villains; you know, before Disney Cruella’s the Home Alone franchise itself – Harry and Marv: The Wonder Years; wouldn’t that be a treat. The most ‘Home Alone’ thing about this movie is the appearance of Buzz McCallister (Devin Ratray); now a cop, calling Kevin a ‘trout-sniffer’ – I hear that! I think when Buzz first appears, the Wet Bandit theme is playing, and no; just no. It’s a shame this movie isn’t any better because once the booby-trap portion of the movie starts, you realise it’s them that make Home Alone serviceable as a franchise, and half of them are pretty good.
I’ve watched Home Alone so many times. Underneath the story threads and main themes is an apathy for the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season – there’s the uninterested elf locking up Santa’s workshop, the McCallister family who are more stressed than excited for their Christmas vacation, and the police department passing Kevin’s mother’s call around despite the fact she is ‘calling from Paris’ and has ‘a son that’s home alone’. I found that this movie, Home Sweet Home Alone, contains a lot of selfishness and ugly passive-aggressiveness that’s meant to pass as humour. There are scenes with entirely no flow, as the movie attempts setup with the scaffolding still around it, for bare-bones payoffs later on – like Max stating his Mum’s full name in a huff, as a means to get Jeff to be able to find him later. Where the original utilises masterful happenstance to move the plot’s chain of events, Home Sweet Home Alone leans a deal on good old misunderstanding, to make things happen, like Max thinking the McKenzies are out to kidnap him instead of just wanting the doll, and Max convincing himself that Officer McCallister won’t help him – and it’s nowhere near as clever. The biggest laugh I got came from outside the movie, at just the thought that this kid is completely destroying his own house over a misunderstanding 😂 Remember how Kevin’s traps were set up in such a way that his parents never even knew there was trouble? All Kevin’s father found coming home was a random gold tooth left by Harry.
I hate how this movie gives Max’s mother Carol (Aisling Bea) plausible deniability for leaving her son at home, and makes it all the goofy uncle’s problem. I hate how Max is not learning… anything, including the value of family, or the responsibility of looking after himself or the property. As push comes to shove, you’re really left rooting for the bandits over Max anyway, especially believing that the little brat stole their doll because he was stroppy at his Mum for not getting him McDonalds. And the McKenzie’s aren’t great people either, lying and neglecting their children – I almost feel sorry for actors Ellie Kemper and Rob Delaney, getting such iconic roles in slapstick villainy, and being written to be so bland and unlikable; especially Delaney, whose character gets so many things wrong, including who’s actually behind the instigating doll-theft in the first place. The best character in this movie is probably the one most movies want you to hate, and that’s Jeff’s upfront happy-go-lucky brother, Hunter (Tim Simons). He’s constantly calling out how everything is terrible; a conduit if ever there was one. I love the casual shade he throws this movie, even down to sipping his tea and not giving two hoots, while Jeff, Pam and Max panic over the airborne antique doll.
Yeah, nobody is rewatching this movie for fun. Maybe it can be one of those Christmas movies that you put on for the kids, in the background, around 2pm, where you’re already swept up in the merriment of Christmas Day; merriment that’ll elevate anything. I thought this movie might rile me up, but it hasn’t – I had the perfect insults prepared too, like, ‘Home Sweet Home Alone, you’re what the French call ‘les incompétents’’ and ‘I wouldn’t recommend anyone look at this movie, ‘if [it] were growing on my ass!’’ – no, this movie has just reminded me why I love Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York so so much, and I like thinking about those movies. Don’t worry, Disney+ recommends Home Alone at the end of Home Sweet Home Alone so you can see how it’s meant to be done.
1.5
P.S. If you read the tagline on the frickin’ poster, it reads; ‘Holiday Classics are Meant to Be Broken’. Breaking things usually means wrecking them, right? I’m taking that to mean the people behind Home Sweet Home Alone know they made a bad movie, and are trying to ease us into going with it. I thought I’d heard a rumour somewhere, for a stoner-comedy remake of Home Alone, where a Ryan-Reynolds-type plays a lazy stay-at-home son, left in charge of the wealthy family home when his parents go on holiday together. Then, as robbers arrive, perhaps the police don’t take the Reynolds character seriously because he’s played too many pranks all over town, or he wants to prove himself competent enough, defending his parents’ legacy, so he sets up guerrilla traps, and resounding hilarity. Where’s that movie; that’s the retread I want to watch! Sure, it may not be a family-friendly suggestion, but Disney just tried that route and I think the evidence speaks for itself. Suppose it’s not too late; Disney, get Ryan Reynolds on the phone now while I forget this movie ever existed.
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