Some people celebrate the 25 days of Christmas with all their favorite holiday films ranging from "Elf" to "Miracle on 34th Street" (pick your version). As I've gotten older, the holidays have come to mean less to me, but even I have a couple of must-watch movies. At the top of the list? "Home Alone" and "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York."
I feel like since '90s kids grew up with these movies they'll always be part of the zeitgeist for us. There's just a real staying power for them. So when I read that Disney was rebooting "Home Alone," you can imagine the skepticism that immediately blanketed my mind.
Some of y'all may not know this, but there are actually five "Home Alone" movies. The first two are good. The third is a jumbled mess. And the final two are made-for-TV trash that aren't worth the digital ink used to mention their existence on this page.
So how could rebooting the franchise possibly produce anything good? Well, I'm surprised to report that although it's not a great movie, "Home Sweet Home Alone" gave it a solid effort. And even though I'll never watch this movie again, I can appreciate parts of it. Maybe my heart grew three sizes that day. Who knows?
CALLBACKS
Just in the first couple of minutes, "Home Sweet Home Alone" establishes it's going to be an equal mix of sass and callbacks to the (good) "Home Alone" movies. In fact, Disney even got the actor who played Buzz (Kevin's older brother) in the first two films to reprise his exact role as a police officer in this movie. It's a good easter egg. Devin Ratray made me chuckle with his two scenes.
For some reason, Kevin has been replaced by a British kid named Max (Archie Yates) in this film, even though it still takes place in Chicago. I thought he'd be awful, but honestly, his sass is pretty humorous. Though he lacks the heart of young Macaulay Culkin, "Home Sweet Home Alone" actually takes some of the focus off Max and places it on the would-be burglars.
In "Home Alone," the movie didn't really establish any backstory for Harry and Marv. They were just thieves robbing house after house on Kevin's block. And thanks mostly to Joe Pesci, they provided so many laughs for the audience, that they didn't need a backstory or humanization.
But the script is flipped a little in this reboot. Ellie Kemper plays a mother named Pam, and Rob Delaney plays her husband, Jeff. They're not professional thieves but lower-income parents who have to sell their family home after Jeff loses his job. During an open house, they discover an old doll in their closet from Jeff's mother that is worth $200,000 on eBay, enough to save their home.
Just one problem. Max "takes" the doll to his home, leaving Pam and Jeff to try and break in (awfully) and suffer through his (childlike?) wrath.
On Max's end, the story is pretty much the same as the other movies, just without the family charm the McCalisters had in the first two films. (Boy do I miss Uncle Frank). The big family is going on Christmas vacation, driving Max crazy. He wishes they would go away. Then they leave him home alone, and somehow in 2021 have virtually no way to communicate with him. You just can't think about it too much, or it all falls apart.
During one of Jeff and Pam's attempted break-ins, Max overhears part of their discussion about selling an ugly boy (the doll) and assumes they've come to kidnap him and sell him to a bunch of old grandmothers. The film's humor definitely isn't its weak point. I appreciated how "Home Sweet Home Alone" leans into its silly gags. A few of them land well and provide real belly laughter.
HUMANIZATION
The main things I'll give "Home Sweet Home Alone" points for are trying to humanize the thieves and actually putting some effort into this reboot. Disney certainly didn't have to try to make something different with this reboot. I mean, this is the company currently in the middle of remaking their '90s animated hits as soulless live-action movies, after all.
Sadly, this film really struggles to justify its existence. And I'm just not convinced, "it's not as bad as it could have been" is a good enough reason to make a movie in hindsight. Is it better than "Home Alone 4" and "5"? Sure. But is that really the bar that should decide if a franchise with five films, three of them rotten, gets a sixth outing? I don't need a Magic 8-Ball to answer that question.
"Home Alone" is an absurd premise. A kid turns his family home into a battle fortress to stop two thieves from robbing the place. The fact that it turned out as good as it did is proof of lightning in a bottle. "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York" certainly doesn't replicate it perfectly, but with Tim Curry and New York antics, it's hard to hate on a second outing.
So how is "Home Sweet Home Alone" justified? I don't think it is. Everything fits perfectly in the original, young Culkin's ability to be simultaneously mischievous and heartfelt, Pesci's bursting-at-the-seams attempts at cursing in a PG movie, a flawless John Williams film score and a family that feels real. The reboot doesn't have any of that.
I'll give Max credit for one thing, though. Nineties kids today joke about how twisted Kevin McCalister was for torturing Harry and Marv, but I'm not exaggerating when I say Max found ways to be even more cruel to his would-be thieves. I flinched so many times. If there was one thing I didn't expect this movie to surpass the original in, it was cruelty.
Just watch the original movie this holiday season. Last I checked, it's also on Disney+.