LM23 Rating: Surprisingly not bad. Watch it on a lazy afternoon or evening
Home Alone is totally unbelievable, but it’s totally a holiday classic. Every little kid imagines they could be just as clever as Kevin McCallister if they were ever left home alone and had to protect the family fortress against two burglars. But Home Alone seems like one of those movies with a one trick pony that you can’t possibly have sequels, too, because how many times can parents accidentally leave their kid home alone?
The first two Home Alone’s featuring the McCallister family suspended just enough reality for the audience to buy that it was possible to leave a kid home alone long enough for there to be trouble and a two-hour movie. I thought I heard as the years went by that there were straight to video Home Alone follow up’s, but I never bothered to stay on top of them. As far as I’m concerned, there can never be another Kevin McCallister.
So when I started seeing promos for a new installment to the Home Alone franchise on Disney+, I was definitely not going to bother with it. The poster features a dark haired boy with spectacles, so nothing like the iconic Kevin. And let’s be real now, there’s just no way in 2021 that there can be a comedy about a kid being left home alone.
Well, being that it’s Disney+ Day, I figure I’ll give the movie a try. The reviews are all terrible, but so were the reviews for the original Home Alone which I love watching every year at Christmas.
Much to my shock, this new Home Alone called Home Sweet Home Alone, is actually not bad. In this movie, the new Kevin if you will is Maxwell (Archie Yates). He’s not a mischievous kid brother who everyone bullies, but he’s just a kid who’s a bit more introverted and can’t handle how noisy his house is with all of his relatives.
Max and his mom Carole (Aisling Bea) are driving home when Max really has to use the loo. As moms have to constantly problem solve, she notices an open house sign along the way and they pretend to be interested buyers. Max is able to use the bathroom and all seems okay. Max bumps into Jeff (Rob Delaney) and his box of creepy dolls including one with an upside down head. Max notes how Jeff reminds him of Frankenstein before he and his mom go on their merry way.
The first big surprise in this new twist on an old classic is that the two burglars eventually are Jeff and his wife, Pam (Ellie Kemper). It turns out sadly that Pam and Jeff are in need of selling their home, which they share with their son and daughter, as Jeff lost his job. But there’s a miracle on the horizon as Jeff discovers that the upside down head doll is worth $200,000.
Jeff rummages through the box of creepy dolls only to discover that the valuable one has gone missing. He can only deduce that it was Max or “Harry Potter” as Jeff calls him later on as being the culprit who stole his (or his mom’s) doll.
No big deal as Jeff drives over to Max and Carol’s house to get back the doll. Unfortunately for Jeff, he’s happened upon the extended family of Max and Carol’s as they’re rushing out the door in hired Uber cars. If you’re wondering, how are they going to leave Max home alone when boarding protocols are so strict these days compared to the late 80’s when the first Home Alone was released?
Well, turns out that Max’s mom and dad both left for Japan (that’s right, it’s Japan and not Paris this time) on an earlier flight and Carol’s brothers, Uncle Blake (Pete Holmes) and Uncle Stu (Chris Parnell) are charged with wrangling all of their kids and Max to the airport. It turned out that the evening before, Max got tired of all of the noise and so he hopped into the back of a BMW in the driveway and helped himself to a personal passenger TV screen. He fell asleep back there and nobody noticed that he didn’t make it into one of the Ubers to the airport.
I have to admit that this being the reason for leaving Max behind was just believable enough for a movie like this. It’s on par with when the neighbor kid came over randomly at the crack of dawn and was mistakenly counted as Kevin when they were doing the head count.
Jeff and Pam are ultimately determined to break into the house and somehow to retrieve the doll. They’re not career criminals like Marv and Harry, but just one-time only criminals as they just need something that’s in a locked home. The other surprise and I don’t know if it’s on purpose, but Jeff and Pam are with their two kids and staying over at Jeff’s brother and sister-in-law’s home not far from Max and Carol’s home. Jeff’s brother, Hunter, and his wife are very well-to-do and the dynamic between Hunter’s family and Jeff’s family reminds me a little bit of the Griswalds in Christmas Vacation.
What I like about Home Sweet Home Alone is that there is an element of sweetness in it. Jeff and Pam are not nutty burglars, but they’re regular parents who are at risk of losing their family home. I should mention that their real estate agent is played by Kenan Thompson. But Jeff and Pam also give back to their community by volunteering to sing Christmas Carols for elderly folks.
The movie is actually just as much about Jeff and Pam as much as it is about Max and Carol. Actually, Carol is really not much of a focus on the film as it is in the first two Home Alone’s. You don’t really get much emotion from Max missing his family or feeling alone at home. The montage of Max enjoying his freedom was so-so and even a bit odd. At one point, Max tries on the clothes of both his dad and mom and eats a mountain of what looks like M&M candies. I’m surprised they didn’t have him eat ice cream the way Kevin did in the first Home Alone.
Where the film does lose a lot of points is just how cruel and painful the booby traps are against Jeff and Pam. You know they are just average parents with kids and they’re going through tough financial times, so it’s extra painful and even scary to watch them slip and fall and get beaten and battered when they are in the house.
I thought it was beyond overboard with Jeff experiencing a loss of a tooth (no doubt in homage to Harry losing his gold tooth) and Pam actually getting needles shot into her face and body (no doubt an homage to Marv stepping on the pins). There was just a lot of hard falls and hits that weren’t necessary. I think if they kept the beatings a bit more light, the movie would have been so much better.
But what does save the movie is that there is a lot of heart to it but not from Max and Carol, but from Jeff and Pam. Once Jeff and Pam discover that Max didn’t take the doll and that he was indeed home alone, they take them back to their house and alert his mom of his whereabouts.
In the end, Jeff and Pam get their house back and Jeff has landed a new job. Max, Carol, her husband, Mike (Andy Daly), and their daughter, Katie (Maddie Holliday) even join Jeff and Pam at their home for a holiday meal at the end of the movie.
I was so prepared for a goofy and lame movie that I was very surprised that it was actually not bad. Having Max be a British boy and look nothing like Kevin McCallister helped. And switching the plot up by not having criminals rob a house, but a couple who just need to get something that’s theirs was also another great reimagining.
There were also some nice nods to the original. Buzz (Devin Ratray) makes an appearance as a policeman. If you didn’t notice, the alarm system at Max’s house is a McCallister alarm system. At Jeff and Pam’s house, a show is on TV in which the characters are reciting the immortal words of the filthy souls. There's also a bit of a running gag of there being so much milk in the fridge at Jeff and Pam's. If you can recall, in the first Home Alone, the mom wanted everyone to drink the milk so they could get rid of it before they went off to Paris. But when they all came back home, she was concerned that there was no milk in the fridge. And though it’s not the same thing exactly, it’s Lego’s that are dangerous to the feet of adults and not Micro Machines.
If you have a lazy afternoon or evening to spare, I recommend checking out Home Sweet Home Alone. There are some scenes when Jeff and Pam are attempting to break into and then get into the house that are hard to watch, but the film is generally cute and moves along the way most Disney+ shows go.
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