The wildly unorthodox set-up of 1990 Christmas staple Home Alone – parents so consumed with making a flight on time that they would somehow leave their bloodthirsty eight-year-old son behind – was at odds with its shock success, a hit so big (its $476m gross would now be around $1bn with inflation) that a sequel was therefore inevitable rather than in any way logical. So Home Alone 2 soon followed, a film that imagined even more unforgivable parental negligence, and then somehow a franchise too, with three more overcalculated misadventures on top, the genuine festive sparkle of the original fading into dusk.
The prospect of yet another one, this time with some vague same universe ties to the first, has created more ire than these things usually do since the trailer dropped last month, a sign of both the original’s enduring fandom and an increased fatigue with revisiting and repeating well-worn property. But dropping on Disney+ in time for its younger target audience to watch, rewatch and then watch again by the big day, Home Sweet Home Alone is a surprisingly entertaining, if wholly unnecessary, sequel, a tangerine where we expected to find a lump of coal.
What prevents the film from being just another limp bot-written recital is a surprisingly sharp sense of humour, with a script from the Saturday Night Live duo Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell and direction from Borat’s Dan Mazer, a more comically adept behind-the-camera team than one would expect from a Home Alone sequel. Their combined involvement has also attracted a funnier cast than anticipated, with This Way Up’s Aisling Bea, Kimmy Schmidt’s Ellie Kemper, Crashing’s Pete Holmes, Veep’s Timothy Simons and Catastrophe’s Rob Delaney alongside SNL favourites Kenan Thompson and Chris Parnell. Reviews have thus far been mostly disdainful but there’s an admirable sense of pluck to the film, as if those involved know very well they’re making something that doesn’t need to exist but they’re making the most of it anyway.
Archie Yates, one of the least awful things about Taika Waititi’s mostly awful Jojo Rabbit, is the latest Kevin replacement, Max, undervalued and underappreciated by his family, headed up by Bea’s beleaguered mother. Through the standard set of far-fetched circumstances, he’s left behind as the family head to Tokyo but initial bliss soon turns (a little too quickly this time) into crushing loneliness. His blandly anonymous show home house is set upon not by burglars but by a cash-strapped married couple, played by Delaney and Kemper, who believe that Max has stolen a vintage doll of theirs worth $200,000. Violence ensues.
There’s a flat and familiar cheapness to Home Sweet Home Alone that quickly reminds us that we’re no longer in the 90s and no longer in the cinema but very much streaming at home in a world of low budgets and low expectations. Chris Columbus’s original popped with colour, the McAllister house styled in aggressive reds and greens, a film that screamed Christmas in every frame. Visually Mazer’s follow-up is far blander in every conceivable way but no attempt to revisit the franchise was ever going to come close and going in thinking as such is a fool’s errand. Instead, there’s enough pleasure from watching the enthusiastic cast go through the motions with a wink, committed to the silliness and pointlessness of the entire endeavour. Day and Seidell’s script has a fun, freewheeling SNL vibe to it, aided by one of the show’s funniest MVPs Thompson in a too-small role and especially Kemper, whose brand of manic ebullience works so well here, especially when sentimentality arrives, her faux-earnestness cutting through the saccharine (unlike in the first film, the emotional kick never really comes).
When the last act mayhem arrives, there’s a slightly knowing edge to the carnage, with both invaders commenting on the serious medical damage they’re facing (a note that could have been played a little more, in my opinion) but the traps are a little unimaginative and Yates’s line delivery a little mechanical in comparison to Macaulay Culkin, the slapstick becoming repetitive and ineffective. There’s also a predictable cop-out twist that softens what could have been the film’s more ingeniously dark addition to the formula.
It’s easy to understand the wearied baggage many come to the film with but Home Sweet Home Alone is a perfectly fine and at times genuinely funny sequel that’s as good as it needs to be. Will we be rewatching it in 20 years time? I don’t think so.
Home Sweet Home Alone is now available on Disney+
