Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)

I'm a sucker for Christmas. I always have been. Something about it just makes my inner child go absolutely crazy. And I'm a sucker for Christmas movies, too. No, not the ones like It's a Wonderful Life or Miracle on 34th Street. I'm more into the kooky ones. My all-time favorite is A Christmas Story, with others like Gremlins, Die Hard, Scrooged, and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation coming in close behind. And though I don't know if I'd call it a personal favorite, but if you read my review earlier, you'll notice that liked Home Alone quite a bit.

A whole bunch have people must have liked it too, because it made a boatload of cash on its way to becoming the most popular movie of 1990. It made enough money that Twentieth Century Fox thought they'd capitalize on that success with a sequel. Titled Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, it was released in 1992 to mostly negative critical reaction and box office grosses that, while impressive, were less than those of its predecessor. And the truth is that Home Alone 2 is a rather underwhelming attempt to catch lightning in a bottle a second time.

Christmastime has come back to suburban Chicago, and the McCallister family has once again gathered to take another Yuletide vacation. And this time around, they're taking extra effort to make sure that young Kevin (Macauley Culkin) is not left home alone again. But thanks to a case of mistaken identity at the airport, Kevin gets separated from the group and ends up on a plane to New York City while the rest depart for Miami.

Armed with a set of credit cards accidentally left in his knapsack by his father, Kevin decides to make the most of the mistake. He checks into the ritzy Plaza Hotel, sees the sights, and pays a visit to Duncan's Toy Chest, the swankiest toy store in Manhattan. But little does Kevin know that the Wet Bandits (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern) have also arrived in New York City after breaking out of prison. Their plan: to rob Duncan's Toy Chest of every dime they've got.

Kevin just so happens to overhear their scheme, and knowing that the store plans to donate all of its Christmas profits to a local children's hospital, Kevin just isn't going to stand by and let it slide. So that's when he decides to orchestrate his own plan, where he will lure the Wet Bandits away from the toy store to his uncle's house, which is in the process of being renovated. There, he's set up an all-new array of booby traps to put the crooks through the ringer.

Anyone who has seen Home Alone 2 knows that it's an utterly shameless attempt to duplicate the first movie. All the elements are there: Kevin gets in trouble for causing a ruckus while taking up for himself. The McCallisters end up sleeping in and get to the airport late. Kevin gets separated from his family during the chaos, and ends up encountering the Wet Bandits. I don't know how he managed to run into them, out of the millions of people in the sprawling metropolis that is New York City, but for the sake of convenience, let's run with it.

Anyway, along the way, he has a series of comic misadventures that includes using props and old gangster movies to make people think he's got company, and he makes friends with a friendly elderly person that he initially thought was really creepy. By the end of the movie, as Kevin's mother rushes to be reunited with him, he beats the utter crap out of the Wet Bandits with household objects before they get arrested.

Even the last few seconds of Home Alone 2 is a callback to the end of the first movie. (Then again, there's a lot of gags from the first movie that are recycled for the sequel beyond the simple formula.) The only real differences between the two movies are that we've moved from Chicago to New York, and that in the sequel, Kevin has run afoul of a hotel concierge who suspects him of using a stolen credit card. Other than that, they're practically the same movie with different settings. It's a real shame.

Returning to the director's chair is Chris Columbus, who does nowhere near the job he did on the first Home Alone. The warm Yuletide feeling from the first movie is nowhere to be found, leaving Home Alone 2 darker and more hollow. It seems like when they decided to do a lame remake and pass it off as a sequel, they forgot to add the Christmas spirit. Sure, there are all kinds of attempts to cram a bunch of saccharine holiday sentimentality down our collective throats, but it all feels artificial and unauthentic. There's some fantastic cinematography, but outside of that, Columbus's work feels like he was on autopilot for the whole thing.

It doesn't help anything that, while watching the movie, you get the impression that John Hughes didn't know what he was doing during the writing process. It's like he took the script from the first movie, put it in New York, made the traps much more dangerous, and said "okay, that'll do." It's hard to watch a frame of the movie without thinking that you've been there, done that. It's not even a good rehash, either. I mean, did we need Kevin to lure the guys to a house? Putting the traps in a toy store would have been a lot cooler. And did Hughes really need to do another subplot where Kevin makes friends with another creepy elderly person? And did he have to do it so badly? The whole thing is so abysmally done that I'd rather just go watch the first movie, because a lot of Home Alone 2's jokes were more successful there.

And I can't talk about the writing without talking about the various traps that Hughes came up with. I said in my Home Alone review that the different household objects that Kevin utilizes against the Wet Bandits would have put them in the hospital. Since the vast majority of rehashed sequels try to do things bigger than their predecessors, Home Alone 2 does the same thing. Only instead of just hurting the Wet Bandits, these traps would have killed them. Kevin would have straight-up murdered these guys if this movie took place in real life. Yes, it is possible for slapstick violence to be excessive, and Home Alone 2 proves it. Because when you think of family entertainment, you think of guys being electrocuted, attacked with fire, and smacked in the face with bricks. If it wasn't a comedy, you'd almost swear that they'd turned that frightening commercial from Scrooged into an actual movie.

And rounding us out is the cast, the majority of which, like the first Home Alone, is disposable. Even Catherine O'Hara, who I thought did a respectable job in the first movie, doesn't really seem to be trying as hard. I also thought that Eddie Bracken and Brenda Fricker, who play the proprietor of Duncan's Toy Chest and a homeless woman that Kevin befriends, are a little bit stiff in their roles. They're definitely trying, I'll give them that. But their characters are so extraneous and unnecessary that I just couldn't get into their performances.

I must also admit that I was a bit surprised to see Tim Curry, of all people, turn up as the Plaza Hotel's concierge. I know he's slummed it before (have you seen The Worst Witch?), but come on now. He is a lot of fun, though, playing the role in such an over-the-top way that I wish he'd been in more scenes. Though with Rob Schneider playing his sidekick, maybe it's a good thing his scenes were so limited.

But just like the first movie, nobody is watching Home Alone 2 for any of the ancillary actors. We're watching it for Macauley Culkin, Joe Pesci, and Daniel Stern. I noted in my review of the first movie that Culkin had a certain charm that helped him carry the movie with ease. But that same charm is missing from Home Alone 2. It feels like he's just going through the motions, hoping that people will be satisfied with a half-assed performance. I could also argue that Pesci and Stern are guilty of the same crimes, but at least they still manage to be funny. They manage to make you overlook that they're just doing more of the same, so I can't hold that against them.

In a nutshell, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York is a knockoff of its predecessor that copies everything but the heart. Sure, it's a guilty pleasure. I can't argue with that. But that doesn't change the fact that Home Alone 2 is just not as good as it could have been. It has both its good qualities and its bad qualities, but I can't justify giving it anything more than two stars. And before you ask, let's just pretend that they never made Home Alone 3 or 4, okay? The less said about them, the better.

Final Rating: **