This is it.
Don't get scared now.
This is Home Alone, and it is an absolute holiday classic.
No turning back.
Another Christmas in the trenches.
This is Home Alone 2 Lost in New York,
and it's slightly less of a holiday classic.
And then there's Home Alone 3, 4, The Holiday Heist,
and Home Sweet Home Alone, and they might as well not even
exist.
So what happened here?
How did this once box office juggernaut fall off a cliff
and into this abysmal run of totally forgettable straight
to video releases that missed the mark by nearly
every metric?
This is my house.
I have to defend it.
The first Home Alone film was a critical and commercial
success.
The film had a unique and original premise
that effectively took the excitement of a big budget
action film and distilled it into a family
friendly comedy about a child protecting
his home from two burglars.
Home Alone is a great movie.
It seamlessly blends humor and heartwarming emotions together
with low budget action set pieces,
all while telling an endearing story about the importance
of family and home that is accessible to pretty
much any viewer of any age.
This translated to Home Alone generating $476.7 million
at the box office.
If you adjust that number four inflation,
it would be the same as grossing over $1 billion
by today's box office standards.
These are not numbers that get ignored.
So of course, a sequel was greenlit almost immediately.
Keep the change, you filthy animal.
Home Alone 2 Lost in New York was released in 1992,
and once again, audiences lined up
for another holiday adventure in hopes
of it capturing the same magic as the original film.
Where's Kevin?
14.
It's a good thing I have my own ticket, just
in case you guys try to ditch me.
For the most part, Home Alone 2 does a pretty decent job
of holding up next to its predecessor.
Some might argue that Home Alone 2 is
a bit of an unrealistic retread of the original film,
but thanks to Macaulay Culkin's magnetically likable
personality and uncanny comedic timing,
he's able to carry this film to similar heights of success.
Merry Christmas, you filthy animal.
[GUNFIRE]
And a happy New Year.
Sure, the film relies a bit too heavily
on recycling old bits to varying degrees of success,
but it seems to follow the model of "if it isn't broken,
there's no need to fix it."
Where the first film spends the inaugural 20 minutes
setting up family dynamics, defining relationships,
and cementing thematic elements, Home Alone 2 sets up
plot devices and gimmicks while serving up
second beats of jokes we have already seen
and heightening characters we already know.
We did it again!
Home Alone 2 sidesteps too many necessary components
to make it a great film.
The McAllisters learned nothing from forgetting their child
in the first film and lose them again in an airport,
Kevin learns nothing about the appropriate thing for a minor
to do when separated from his family,
and Harry and Marv learned nothing
about Kevin McAllister's superhuman understanding
of applied physics.
Since nobody has learned anything,
we aren't necessarily as invested
as we need to be as the film's story plays out.
Despite all of its flaws, Home Alone 2 Lost in New York
was another home run at the box office
and was able to generate a sizable return of about $358
million in 1992.
So of course, the studios went right back
to work on Home Alone 3.
You guys give up, or you thirsty for more?
Macaulay Culkin wasn't returning for a third foray
into the world of makeshift home security systems,
and the studio had to seek out a child
performer who could effectively fill Macaulay Culkin's shoes--
something that just isn't possible.
What John McClane is to Die Hard,
Kevin McCallister is to Home Alone.
And not having him involved in a Home Alone
film doesn't make sense.
Look what you did your little jerk.
Home Alone 3 is a stand alone film,
and it's wholly unrelated to the first two films.
There isn't even a nod to them.
It's just an entirely new film that uses the same formula.
But it fails on almost every front.
It seems like the intent behind making
it was just to get to the hijinks
as fast as possible without laying
any of the necessary groundwork to tell us why we should care.
The plot just focuses primarily on injuring four criminals who
are about as threatening as a bowl of cereal
in wild and outlandish ways.
There's no heart, there's no charm,
and there's certainly no Macaulay Culkin.
Alex D. Linz is a cute kid, but it really starts and stops
there.
It's not that he's necessarily a bad performer.
He just doesn't have that gravitational charm
that's present in Macaulay Culkin's performance.
Are you here all by yourself?
Ma'am, I'm eight years old.
You think I'd be here alone?
I don't think so.
Home Alone 4 struggled with almost the exact same problems
as Home Alone 3, but it adds insult to injury
by attempting to effectively reboot the franchise.
This film never even hit theaters.
It was released as a made for TV movie,
and it feels lackluster even by those standards.
The plot is a convoluted mess.
Kevin's family is going through a divorce,
his dad has a new girlfriend who is rich,
Marv is the primary antagonist, but they recast him
with French Stewart.
You!
Hello, Marv.
Long time no see.
And it was an even bigger mistake
to think that another performer could
have stepped into the role of Kevin McCallister.
There's none of that sly, impish wit
that we all came to love from Macaulay Culkin's performance.
I was making ornaments out of fish hooks.
My new fish hooks?
I can't make ornaments out of the old ones
with dry worm guts stuck on them.
You would think that after two colossal failures
that Home Alone would finally rest in peace.
But in 2012, Disney tried to breathe new life
into the franchise with Home Alone The Holiday
Heist, another made for TV movie,
and not even the somewhat startling inclusion
of a classically trained actor like Malcolm McDowell
could save it.
A bunch of two bit bandits.
I'm not going to be stymied by a slippery walkway.
Again, this film runs into the same problem.
It tries to take a cute kid, criminals, and pranks,
and make a movie without doing any labor whatsoever
in telling us why we should care.
The most recent attempt to revive Home Alone came last
year with Home Sweet Home Alone releasing as a Disney+ original
film.
This film ignores the latter three films in the series
and instead serves as a sequel to the original films.
This is evidently supported by the inclusion
of Buzz McAllister, who has gone on to become a police officer,
and several homes in the area are protected
by McAllister Home Security.
So the film, at the very least, extends within the same world.
When I was a kid, my family went on vacation.
We forgot my little brother Kevin.
Twice.
Home Sweet Home Alone is better than the latter three
installments, but that isn't saying much.
The villains are an improvement.
Ellie Kemper and Rob Delaney bring
some established comedic chops into play,
and Archie Yates is an incredibly endearing performer
who comes into the franchise after a breakout performance
in Taika Waititi's Jojo Rabbit.
In this film, the narrative gets flipped on its head.
Instead of burglars coming in to steal from a family,
it's actually the protagonist who steals from the burglars.
They're trying to retrieve their stolen property.
While there are definitely some fun moments in the film,
it plays out more like a highlight reel
rather than a cohesive film, but the structure is there.
Ooh, that did not sound right.
Home Alone was built upon the foundation of thematic elements
of togetherness, individuality, and what it
means to be part of a family.
And instead of embracing those themes,
the franchise centered on the elaborate hijinx and comedy
to grab the viewer's attention.
No offense, but that seems like sort of a dumb thing to do.
This is fine if you are a six-year-old,
but it doesn't create a viewing experience that everyone
can necessarily enjoy.
There's nothing for us to latch on to emotionally,
and thus we have no reason to actually care.
And without a charismatic performer
like Macaulay Culkin in the driver's seat
of a primary protagonist, these lackluster scripts never
deliver enough charm to keep an ever evolving movie going
audience engaged.
Without a true sequel featuring an adult
Kevin McCallister played by Macaulay Culkin,
the franchise will continue to run into the same problems
hand over fist.
And that's it for this one, folks.
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