The more things change, the more they stay the same

Rating: 3/10 (30 October 2008)

Home Alone took everyone by surprise when it became the top money-earner of 1990. Director Chris Columbus, writer/producer John Hughes and most of the cast and production staff reunited two years later for this sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. But the cynic in one has to ask, did we really need a sequel to Home Alone?
It feels like everyone has returned because they knew they had a sure-fire hit on their hands rather than any pressing concern to continue this story arc. This was Chris Columbus' first time directing a sequel, and as expected, he falls into the exact same trap that cripples many a sequel. He fails to do anything different with it.
It may have traded in being left at home for the city of New York, but its still the same exact story as last time. Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin, obnoxious as ever) is separated from his family at Christmas. He enjoys the freedom to do whatever he wants. Until things turn sour. The burglars are back, and just happen to be in New York as well. He sets up another mine field of home-made booby traps for them. The lonely snow-shoveller from Pt 1 has been replaced with a lonely pigeon lady. She rescues him. He gets reunited with his family.
Home Alone 2 feels like a much more calculated attempt to recreate the successful elements of Home Alone. The first was not quite a holiday classic, but it was reasonably successful. Due to John Hughes' fine screenplay rather than anything on Columbus' part. Pt 2 sticks to the formula laid out by Pt 1 with an almost alarming reverence.
It ticks off each situation like a check-list. And I'm afraid the fault for that lies with John Hughes. His script has none of the tiny amusements or sharp insights that propelled the first film. He's just copied his own screenplay, and grafted it onto a new setting. I think it was around this point that John Hughes sold himself out to Hollywood. Nowadays he only churns out increasingly formulaic fluff. Merely the same concept with whole different actors.
Chris Columbus has also borrowed an idea or two from his debut feature, Adventures in Babysitting. The story of four kids lost on the streets of Chicago one night. That film always seemed like a missed opportunity to me. Chris Columbus is far too bland as a filmmaker. He played the whole situation too safely, and never really got the best out of it. In fact when I first saw it, I thought if it had been made by John Hughes, it could have been a much better film. I was hoping for that with Home Alone 2, but unfortunately I didn't get it.
This is an even greater disappointment. Columbus' blandness coupled with Hughes' lack of imagination all adds up to a very boring film. Home Alone 2 never really ignites. It misses the natural warmth and amusing developments of the first film by a mile. There is something almost mechanical to it all. Like watching different plot points clicking into place at exact moments. But the one thing that really works against the film is Macaulay Culkin.
Home Alone got a lot of mileage from young Kevin's innocent, wide-eyed view of his predicament. By this point, that innocence has all but gone. Culkin's precocity has completely taken over, and now he's just an obnoxious brat we couldn't care less about. Its impossible to feel for his plight because he's so unlikable. And having him mouth inane sentiments in a shallow attempt to make him seem wise only irritates. They lack any conviction and hollows out an already empty film.
We do get a few amusements from some of the new members of the cast. Tim Curry gets a few laughs as the manager of the Plaza Hotel. In a performance seemingly modelled on Basil Fawlty, his growing suspicion of Kevin is pretty funny, even if he's a bit stupid to be suckered in by Kevin's tricks. And Dana Ivey and Rob Schneider fill out the cast nicely as the equally suspicious (and equally stupid) hotel staff.
But nothing else works. There are times when Home Alone 2 thinks its being really clever, by dropping in knowing references to the first film, in a vain attempt to make you think this is not a rehash. But it is. And its not above reusing the same gags either. We even get another film that Kevin uses to dupe people with. Which also happens to be a sequel. You can almost imagine Chris Columbus and John Hughes patting themselves on the backs at times like that.
Of course what people come to see the movie for is Harry and Marv (Joe Pesci & Daniel Stern) going through another of Kevin's obstacle courses. But where it proved to be the comic high point of the first film, Chris Columbus has blown it up to absurd proportions for this one. The traps in Pt 1 were at least kept within the boundaries of plausibility, but sadly Columbus has thrown all that out the window. Its amazing they're still breathing, much less walking after the things they go through this time. They even fall off the top of a building with no apparent after effects. Its at this point you realise you're watching the live-action equivalent of a Looney Tunes cartoon. Only not as funny.
I don't even want to talk about the improbable, contrived happy ending. Home Alone 2 is a real stinker. Its never as funny as it likes to think it is, or as warm either. Its just a pointless sequel that only reveals a blatant calculation at the heart of the enterprise. Another bland film from the drab Chris Columbus, and the start of the sad decline of John Hughes' once proud career.