Home Sweet Home Alone - Review Thread

While I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s one of my favorite movies of all-time, it’s still nonetheless one that’s pretty near and dear to my heart, as I imagine is the case for many other people my age. While obviously being very pro-kid and just plain fun with lots of good humor and slapstick, it’s also a movie that never loses sight of the heart at its core. Yes, it’s satisfying to see Harry and Marv bumble their way through Kevin’s house of booby traps and to see Kevin revel in the pleasures of having his family’s enormous house to himself, but the true success of John Hughes’ script is how it weaves in its honestly touching message of the value of spending time with your loved ones. So at the end, when Kevin’s Mom finally makes it back home, it’s a legitimate emotional payoff/moment -- as is the scene when Kevin realizes the creepy snow shoveler in his neighborhood is just an ordinary guy who regrets the lost time he’s had with his estranged daughter -- which makes the movie worth much more than just the laughs we get from seeing two guys get hit in the face with paint cans and whatnot. The reason the original Home Alone has endured for so many years is the heart it has, not just the slapstick -- though the slapstick is still good, too.

But, rather unsurprisingly, that’s a message that the makers of Disney+’s reboot Home Sweet Home Alone have failed to grasp -- among quite a few others. Look, silly as it may sound, Home Alone actually does mean a lot to me. Not only is it a childhood favorite that still holds up, the slapstick ended up having quite a bit of an effect on my sense of humor as it stands today. So, when a product as offensively inferior as Home Sweet Home Alone comes along, I’m gonna take it a bit personally.

Oh, where to begin, where to begin? Okay, let’s start with the central conceit/premise. For a movie that takes on the Home Alone moniker/legacy, this film demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the point of Home Alone. And a big part of the point should be that a Home Alone movie should inherently focus on the kid who’s left behind, right? Well, not if you ask the makers of this thing. This time, the lead kid is a British tyke by the name of Max (the charming Archie Yates from 2019’s wonderful Jojo Rabbit), who gets left behind after his clueless family -- in particular his dumb Uncle played by Pete Holmes -- mistakenly assume that he took an early flight to Tokyo with his Mom (Aisling Bea) for a family holiday trip, when in reality, Max just fell asleep in a parked car in the garage to get away from his annoying family. It’s here where we start to see how Home Sweet Home Alone is really just going through the motions. In the original, you really felt the frustration Kevin felt with his family and vice versa, because the zoo that was the McAllister House the night before a big trip didn’t do anybody’s personality any favors, so when Kevin discovers he’s all by himself, his initial excitement feels justified because everybody’s short tempers worked. Here, you really just get the sense that Max is only mildly annoyed at best with his crazy family and just needs some alone time as we all would. So when Max discovers his current situation, it doesn’t feel earned.

That might also be because the movie isn’t really even about Max in the first place. No, the makers of Home Sweet Home Alone were apparently under the delusion that what old and new fans of the franchise would want to see would be a movie that’s mainly from the perspective of the two robbers. Yeah, because a movie that’s supposed to put emphasis on kid empowerment focusing in on two adults trying to go against a kid makes perfect sense. Now, to give this movie just a little bit of credit, I appreciate how it tried to subvert the expected formula here some, but this movie’s idea of subversion is so inherently flawed, that it’s baffling. So, yeah, Max is in fact NOT the lead of this movie. Instead, it’s the happily married couple of Jeff and Pam McKenzie (Rob Delaney and Ellie Kemper), who are in the process of selling their family home because they can’t afford it any more, but have yet to tell their children about it because they’re afraid of springing the news on them so close to Christmas. But when they soon discover that a particular antique doll from Jeff’s Grandmother’s bequeathed collection with a particular manufacturing defect that makes it worth thousands of dollars can be their salvation, Jeff and Pam get renewed hope...until they find said doll missing and conclude that Max, who visited the open house early on in the film just to use their bathroom and got in an argument with Jeff while admiring the defective doll, stole it out of spite. So, then, after a bit of “recon” on Jeff’s part, the marrieds decide that the only way to save their home and keep their family where they belong is to break inside Max’s house while he’s in there all alone and steal the doll back.

Okay -- are you seeing the problem here?

By trying to “shake up” the Home Alone formula here, Disney and these filmmakers just ended up creating a whole new problem -- making the supposed “bad guys” WAY too sympathetic and in turn, making the kid the villain. So, it’s this odd, murky middleground the movie occupies with them that’s basically “Yeah, these two are doing it for sympathetic reasons, but they’re still breaking into the house, so they deserve to nearly get killed and break bones.” Um...well, that’s one way to go. A wrong way, mind you, but a way to go all the same. Let’s think back on Harry and Marv for a moment: they were unequivocally bad and a threat to Kevin and his house and safety. So, yeah, they had to be on the receiving ends of those traps. Here, we’re talking about a couple who all they want to do is keep their home and give their own kids a nice Christmas. So when it comes time for them to navigate Max’s volley of booby traps, the tone just feels waaaaaay off. Instead of feeling like these two are getting their just desserts, it (rightfully) feels like they’re being needlessly tortured by a psychopathic little boy -- and all because of those age-old “comedic misunderstandings.” In this case, because Max overheard Jeff and Pam talking about getting their hands on the doll and selling it to a buyer for money and mistakenly assumed they were talking about selling him into a child-smuggling ring (by the way, what even is this plot?), which can happen even to the best of us as kids, let’s face it. You know how in a lot of their live-action remakes, Disney has been guilty of making certain plot points worse by trying to “fix them” and/or make them too PC to match the times? This is one of the worst examples of that trend that I can think of.

It also doesn’t help that when they’re not being made slaves to plot convenience, that Rob Delaney and Ellie Kemper actually aren’t all that bad as an on-screen couple and actually have kind of somewhat decent chemistry. Which just makes the slapstick climax feel all the more cruel for them. Also, whenever the movie actually DOES focus on him, Archie Yates still has that same charm he showed in Jojo Rabbit and is the kind of precocious kid who’s not overbearing in that quality. The movie just could’ve used more of him actually at home alone other than just delegating most of that to a montage. Also, I’ll admit that the slapstick scenes, traps and gags are well-staged and directed, even if they still give off the wrong tone considering the characterization of the two adults. But whatever glimmers of positivity emerge here are constantly overshadowed by the stupidity and ineptitude on these filmmakers’ part in recognizing why the original Home Alone worked so well in the first place. Its attempts at heart and sentimentality are either nonexistent or completely unearned. Plus, with this movie clocking in at under 90 minutes not counting the end credits, there’s this constant rushed feeling to the plot that contributes to everything ringing hollow, the ending of this movie especially. Oh, and don’t even get me started on the way this movie clears up the misunderstanding between Max, Jeff and Pam.

I genuinely believe a good modern/updated version of Home Alone could be made today (in fact, I kind of crave one cause I have a soft spot for good kid vs. adult slapstick, I have to admit), but Home Sweet Home Alone ain’t it. Between the lame humor and miscalculated approach, this movie should be ashamed to call itself Home Alone and is deserving of a paint can to the face or crushed ornaments to its bare feet in its own right.