When the setting steals the show, you know it's a missed opportunity.

Rating: 5/10 (23 December 2018)

While this has some very entertaining moments, this is really an unnecessary sequel to the first installment of one biggest box office hits of the 1990's. In retrospective, even the first film doesn't hold up nearly 30 years later, being rather violent and cartoonish featuring a family I certainly would not want to be any part of. While this time indeed, the Macaulay Culkin character of Kevin does make it on to the plane, it's the wrong one and he ends up in the wrong City. While his family ends up being stuck in the hotel because of constant rain in Florida, Kevin makes it to sunny Manhattan where once again he encounters the nasty Crooks played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern. Christmas in New York is said to be magical, and it's up to Culkin to find ways of passing the time while his mother, Catherine O'Hara, strives to get there so she can find her son home she is frantic of having lost for the second time over the Christmas season.
The characters play by Stern and Pesci have outworn their welcome, and this time the violence tossed at them by Culkin in an abandoned family home seems to be twice as ruthless, not that they don't deserve it. But in reality, there is no way anybody could survive any of the self defense ploys that Culkin throws at them, so that aspect of the plot line becomes quite eye-rolling as it goes far too over-the-top.
That means that the film is best when it deals with the colorful characters of New York, particularly Brenda Fricker as a Central Park bird lady, Eddie Bracken as a kindly toy store owner and Tim Curry and Dana Ivey as imperious front desk clerks at the Plaza Hotel. What does become equally as irritating as Stern and Pesci is Kevin's family, especially his obnoxious older brother who creates a major disturbance at a Christmas concert Kevin has a solo in that in defending himself, Kevin causes the entire presentation to fall apart. Shots of New York around the holidays bring on a feeling of nostalgia, especially with many businesses which are no longer around as well as a nice shot of the Twin Towers less than a decade before they were destroyed. A cameo by a certain overrated celebrity turned politician is fortunately extremely fast and other than a quick "eew" at the side of them is only a minor disturbance. In true Hollywood fashion, this was not the end of the saga, but the last one in my opinion worth bothering with. I used to rank this as much higher in rating, but other than a few sweet moments, including a thoughtful one involving a pair of turtle dove tree decorations, it does not hold up as well as it did on my first viewing when it first opened in theaters.