Home Sweet Home Alone
Disney+The tree is up, the bells are ringing, the children are preparing to defy all odds against home invaders. Home Sweet Home Alone marks the time-honoured tradition of battering, bruising, and breaking the hearts and minds of small-time crooks. Or, at least, it was. Home Alone and the Macauley Culkin classic are linked up and crushed down in this weird modernisation of a holiday classic. But a classic this is not, and as much as director Dan Mazer will be banking on the name value of those beloved Christmas comedies, it leaves little, if any mark on the apparent franchise. If Malcolm McDowell cannot salvage your flagging brand, neither can Rob Delaney.
Those stars have all dabbled in the now-stale waters of those later sequels to Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Where Home Sweet Home Alone fails though is in its apparent revitalisation of the comedy that sparked it all. The change is not in context or plot but in meaning and reason for it. Max (Archie Yates) is unflinching in the fear of death but cowers away when realising being left home alone, accidentally, could lead to his parents’ imprisonment. It has no bite, and where Delaney and Ellie Kemper are strong draws, their dialogue is weak and the pratfalls they are put through are feeble. Painting plucky young Max as the villain is a wild choice, and not one Home Sweet Home Alone either confirms or denies. He is on the precipice of villainy, yet thanks to misunderstandings and childish whimsy, he is the hero.
But misunderstandings are very much the concept that guides this new generation of Home Alone franchise enthusiasts. Bea and Yates riff with one another as well as they can with such awful dialogue. It is a shame, too. A cast this likeable deserve more. Delaney exudes the comfortable blur between thief and concerned parent. But it is that blur between the two and the lack of commitment from Mazer that steers them away from classic comedy antics. Delaney and Bea have early moments of strong chemistry and throwing Kemper into the mixture helps. But it is all futile. Bratty children guide the story, and the robbers are painted as toothless anti-heroes, rather than committed villains. Home Sweet Home Alone lacks both Christmas spirit and commitment to its few notes of delight. Instead, they are happy to stomp them down into a package deal fit for streaming purposes, and without the bite of a real villain or a layered approach to subplots like in the original.
“No parents. No problem,” the tagline reads. No plot appears to be a problem for Home Sweet Home Alone. Cathartic it may be to witness A-Listers stagger around taking bumps like professional wrestlers, it is not what audiences will, really, want to see within Home Sweet Home Alone. They will want the charming reunion of a family and their son who they simply forgot about. Catherine O’Hara blurred the line between comedic brilliance and genuine, dramatic concern. All Aisling Bea can do is hope for some sliver of comparison to be made between the two. That is all this cast can hope for. At least they tried, but trying counts for nothing when it comes to crafting Christmas cheer. Pop culture jabs, jokes about stepping on LEGO, elf on a shelf, and everything else that a corporate Christmas could envision for families stuck indoors. Seek shelter in the original, and watch the wreckage of Home Sweet Home Alone from afar.