Home Sweet Home Alone is the sixth film sharing the Home Alone title and premise. Exclusive to the streaming behemoth Disney Plus, the film’s tagline reads, “Holiday classics were meant to be broken.” (Remove the word “holiday” and you might have Disney’s corporate M.O.) The film’s self-awareness of meddling with a beloved cultural touchstone raises the question: Does that self-awareness justify the remake/sequel?
Home Sweet Home Alone feels like the first in the series to be made by people who grew up on the first film. Nowhere is this more evident than the shift in focus from the abandoned child (Archie Yates as Max) to the home invaders themselves as the main characters, i.e. people who are now roughly the age of someone who saw Home Alone (1991) when they were Kevin McCallister’s age. It’s an interesting take, but it clashes with the slapstick aspects of the franchise, and flirts with turning Max into the bad guy.
Ellie Kemper and Rob Delaney play Pam and Jeff McKenzie, an upper-middle-class couple who must sell their house due to financial struggles (he’s an IT guy who hasn’t embraced “the cloud” yet). When they suspect the precocious young Brit Max Mercer of stealing an extremely rare and valuable doll from their open house, they hatch a plan to retrieve it, thereby no longer having to sell their house or be almost poor ever again. There are some tone-deaf class issues at play, because as far as I can tell, everyone in this movie is rich.
The film’s creators have some comedy chops; director Dan Mazer has been a collaborator with Sacha Baron Cohen since Ali G, and the two credited writers have TV and web experience, but it only amounts to a handful of funny lines and little else. The cast is full of good comedians, but aside from Rob Delaney and Aisling Bea (as Max’s mom) every actor feels misused. Kenan Thompson provides some early energy as the McKenzies’ realtor, but serves little purpose to the plot. Chris Parnell and Andy Daly play Max’s uncle and father respectively and have two lines in less than a minute of screen time collectively! Why are they even there? Is it too soon to ask for the Mazer cut?
It doesn’t help that Archie Yates as the Kevin stand-in can’t hold a candle to the young Macaulay Culkin, but he’s also not given a chance (though I did like when he went all Scarface on a mound of Skittles). This is Pam and Jeff McKenzie’s film, and when a young, posh twerp inflicts Looney Tunes levels of violence on characters the audience is supposed to care about, rather than two lovable criminals, the laughs turn into groans.
There’s a scene in Home Sweet Home Alone where a character is watching an old sci-fi B-movie, but the lines being spoken are from Angels With Filthy Souls. The character responds, “Ugh, this is garbage! I don’t know why they’re always trying to remake the classics. Never as good as the originals.” Why indeed.
