“This is garbage. I don’t know why they’re always trying to remake the classics. Never as good as the originals.”
As much as I’d like to take credit for this one, this is a literal line spoken by one of the characters in Home Sweet Home Alone. What was clearly written as intended tongue-in-cheek, self-deprecating joke, is really just a perfect one-line review of this terrible movie. Because it is awful, it flat out sucks.
I actually thought the trailer looked halfway decent, and with the absolutely stacked cast (more on that later), I thought Home Sweet Home Alone had a chance to be an alright movie. But man was I wrong.
While it technically is a sequel, as evidenced by Devin Ratray returning as Buzz McAllister, now a police officer, it more or less functions as a remake of the 1990 Christmas classic. Archie Yates plays Max Mercer, a young boy left behind at home as his family takes a trip to Tokyo. Rob Delaney and Ellie Kemper co-star as Jeff and Pam McKenzie, a financially strapped couple in the middle of trying to sell their house. They believe Max stole a valuable heirloom doll during their open house. They decide to break into the Mercer house – which they believe to be empty – to retrieve the doll.
That right there is one of the huge problems with the movie. While they’re clearly going about this in the wrong way, they’re not criminals per se, they’re not “bad guys.” In Home Alone and its sequel (I don’t recognize movies 3-5), Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern are legitimate criminals. They’re scumbags, and you don’t feel bad seeing them subjected to Kevin’s house of horrors. But here, the McKenzies are too relatable, too “normal” if you will. They’re even, to an extent, sympathetic characters. You won’t find joy or entertainment in watching Jeff take a sack of sugar to his…sack. There’s no real sense that these two “deserve” this. And without that, it zaps all the fun out of the movie, in the area where the first two succeeded so strongly.
Let’s talk about that cast. Yates (*fantastic* in Jojo Rabbit), Kemper, and Delaney, being the leads, have plenty to do. It doesn’t amount to anything, but at least they tried to utilize their talents. But the supporting cast? Absolutely egregious use of the collection of talent.
Timothy Simons, Pete Holmes, Chris Parnell, Andy Daly, Ally Maki, Jim Rash, Amy Okuda. There’s simply no excuse for a movie to be as unfunny as Home Sweet Home Alone when you have a cast like this. Chris Parnell is in the movie for about 10 seconds with one line. Daly is only in a couple scenes with just two or three lines. After Simons and Maki, Okuda of all people has the most substantial role as an airport ticketing agent. And nothing against her at all (anyone from The Good Place gets a thumbs up in my book), but when you have legitimately some of the funniest people alive, why not use them?
(Just a quick side note, Timothy Simon’s Jonah Ryan character in Veep is on the funniest characters of all time. This scene in particular is iconic, very NSFW language, though.)
There’s really not much else to say. The setup to get Max (sigh) home alone stinks, it’s rushed through and is held together by a string. The jokes don’t land, helped in no part by one of the bigger wastes of comedic talent in a long time. The physical comedy comes off as maybe more mean-spirited than anything. Just a complete misfire from top to bottom. Do yourself a favor, skip this, pretend it doesn’t exist, and just continue to rewatch the original two classics.
Score: 8/100 (yes, it’s really this bad)
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