TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
PROBLEM: at first glance , it appears that the home alone movies are brainless slapstick intended for those with minds of 8-year olds .
that 's true of home alone
2
and i 'd bet money that it 's true of home alone
3 ( opening soon ) .
but home alone
actually has a lot going for it , and the cartoon slapstick does n't get in the way .
the mcalisters , all 15 of them , are going to france for the holidays .
four adults and eleven kids are spending the night together before heading to the airport en masse .
the littlest kid , kevin , is the victim of the older kids ' cruelty .
kevin 's patience runs out when he learns that his plain - cheese pizza has already been eaten , and he 's going to have to starve .
he attacks his big bully brother buzz , who had been teasing him .
the fight disrupts the already - chaotic dinner , spilling milk and soft drinks all over the table , a few cousins , and an uncle .
the knee - jerk reaction is for everyone to blame kevin .
nobody came to his rescue when he was being teased , but they all point their fingers when he fights back .
the ultimate punishment comes from mom ( catherine o'hara ) who sends him up to the spare bedroom in the attic for the night .
on his way up the stairs , he tells her that " families suck " and that he hopes never to see any of his family again .
that night the power goes out , knocking out the alarm clocks , so the mcalisters wake up in a big hurry to get to the airport .
in a surprisingly plausible setup , kevin is mistakenly accounted for , and the family heads off without him .
it 's interesting that , in a subtle way , his parents never noticed him missing because of their deliberate desire to separate themselves from their children .
first they delegate the headcount to an older sibling , and second , they put all the kids in coach while they fly first class .
they 're two - thirds of the way across the atlantic before they realize they are missing a child .
meanwhile , kevin believes that somehow his wish has come true .
he 's finally rid of his family !
life is a dream come true .
he can jump on the beds , watch r - rated movies , eat gobs of ice cream and potato chips , and dig through his big brother 's secret box .
slowly , the novelty wears off and he settles into the mundane .
he grooms himself , he does the laundry , he goes shopping ( " i bought some milk , eggs , and fabric softener " ) .
he also starts to miss his family , not just for their company , but for the security they bring .
the furnace in the basement is a scary monster , the old man next door is a snow - shovel murderer , and two crooks are trying to break into his house .
macaulay culkin is cute but he is n't much of an actor .
still , we can see that kevin 's character grows , thanks to some good direction and editing
.
for example , acting has little to do with the emotional impact of the scene where kevin searches out a seasonal santa at night , just as " santa " is getting in his car .
kevin asks the man to pass on his request - he wants his family back - to the real santa .
he learned how to deal with the furnace .
you turn on the lights and it 's not so scary anymore .
he goes to a church one evening
and there he sees the snow - shovel murderer , who actually turns out to be a nice man .
they talk about their fears and kevin learns that age alone does not make you less afraid .
finally , in the last 20 minutes , kevin confronts his last fear - the bandits , head on ( literally ) .
this last act is full of violent comedic slapstick , and after the movie 's genuine dramatic setup , it is dessert .
it 's a lot of fun , and it does n't overwhelm the rest of the movie
.
on the whole , home alone is a great holiday movie .
john williams ' original score has the sound and feel of holiday music without the disadvantage of being overplayed at the malls , and the christmas setting can put you in the mood for those family gatherings .
but it does have its flaws .
the smallest problem is that culkin does n't act very well .
as i said before , he is cute , but repeated viewings reveal more about how columbus covered himself than about culkin 's insight into his character .
the biggest problem is that during the cartoony coda , the villains threaten kevin 's life about five times .
instead of " i 'm gon na get that kid
" they say " i 'm gon na kill that kid .
"
some might argue that the tone is the same , but i strongly disagree .
mixing comedy with specific and viable threats of murder is a sociopathic faux - pas .
i 'll probably never see home alone 3 , and i wish i had skipped home alone 2 , but i do enjoy home alone almost every year
.
do n't let your impressions of the others detract from the original , which has much more to offer than cartoon slapstick .

SOLUTION: P

PROBLEM: as bad as " mimic " was , it definitly scared me .
" mimic " continued the frightening hollywood trend of taking a foreign director who shows a lot of creative ingenuity and style , and completely flushing it when he comes to america to make a movie .
director guillermo del toro was recently imported from mexico after he made the award winning and inventive horror film " cronos .
" that movie worked because it took an unconventional story , unique characters and well written plot and dialogue to create a truly scary movie .
in " mimic " , del toro does n't bother to give us anything original .
the plot is a stupid combination of " aliens " meets " species " meets " jurassic park .
"
the characters have been recycled from a few hundred other movies .
there 's nothing new in " mimic " .
it 's just a bunch of old tricks that rarely work .
at the end of the movie , you 're stuck wanting your money back .
maybe the worst thing about the movie is that del toro followed another annoying trend of recent movies
: he forgot to turn the lights on .
i do n't understand why suspense movies lately have to follow the " seven " trend and be set in dark , dank areas .
watching " mimic " i was tempted several times to yell at the screen " turn the lights on !
the switch is to your right !
use common sense !
just do it !
you 'll be able to see the monster in the corner !
"
there 's a scene where mira sorvino is standing in subway station while the lights are flickering on and off .
it looked like the light operator was having a seizure , and sorvino did n't even notice - she just stood there looking like she was having deep thoughts .
" hmmm . . . .
i think bean soup would be good for dinner tonight . "
" mimic " has a lot of incidental shock tactics ( boo !
just kidding ! ) and follows them up with the real scare , but nothing in this movie scares you .
the audience in the theater never jumped during suspenseful moments ; i think they were bored , too .
i should n't blame del toro .
he is n't the first successful foreign director to come to hollywood and make a bad movie .
hong kong director john woo made two of the best action films of all time , " the killer " and " hard boiled " then came to america to make the stupid " broken arrow .
" french directors luc besson ( " la femme nikita " ) and george sluizer ( " the vanishing " ) followed woo 's lead and made dumbed down versions of those movies .
robert rodriguez , who directed the terrific low budget
" el mariachi " came to hollywood and directed the horrible , high - budget " desperado .
"
i do n't know why a foreign director who shows such talent in his country ca n't make a good american movie .
woo finally broke through and made " face / off " , but it still is n't up to par with his earlier films .
i get the feeling a hollywood producer sits in his office , chews on a big smelly cigar and says to the director , " welcome to america !
i bet you must be tired after being on that boat for so long .
do you speak english ?
now , i know you think you 've made good movies in the past , but now you 're in america , so things are a little different here .
just remember what the american audience always wants , and you 'll be fine .
they want to see at least one big breasted woman , characters that they 've seen a thousand times before
( because change scares americans ) , and you always need a cheesy feel - good ending to wrap things up . if you do n't make that kind of movie , you 'll be shining my shoes in no time . "

SOLUTION: N

PROBLEM: they should have stuck to the promise emblazoned on the original movie 's poster : " no sequel .
"
scary movie 2 is nowhere near as funny as its predecessor , and it is not because the wayans brothers , shawn and marlon doing the writing and keenen ivory behind the camera , do n't try .
what defeats them is the genre they have chosen to spoof .
the first movie - an outrageous , low - brow , savage satire of teen slasher flicks such as scream
and i know what you did last summer - succeeded because of its take - no - prisoners attitude toward a type of film that was in vogue , familiar and popular .
in scary movie 2 , the filmmakers take on the haunted house - ghost story format which , if you look at the grosses for such recent lame offerings as the respective remakes of the haunting and house on haunted hill , did not draw audiences nor enter the cultural psyche as did the various teen slasher series .
scary movie 2 does start off promising with a wonderful spoof of the exorcist , featuring james wood in the max von sydow role and veronica cartwright lampooning ellen burstyn .
of course split pea soup is the punch line - an overabundant amount , which offers the hope that the rest of the movie will be just as tasteless and excessive .
but this pre - credit sequence has nothing at all to do with the main action , which features the cast members from the original signing up to spend a weekend at a creepy haunted mansion as part of a university class project .
some of the jokes are as scatological and offensive as in the original , but they lack that take - no - prisoners bite that raised scary movie to the heights of burlesque .
scary movie 2
merely lurches from one lame sendup to another , offering weak spoofs of that nike shoe ad in which everyone does acrobatics with a basketball , and the films what lies beneath and hannibal ( features that only faired adequately at the box office ) , john woo 's mission : impossible 2 and charlie 's angels .
it is as if the wayans and their team of writers - at least seven are credited - just threw ideas in a blender and hoped they 'd coalesce
.
they do n't .
while the pace of the original left you breathless , the sequel moves with the speed of an 18-wheeler carrying two tons of concrete up a steep mountain road .
you can almost hear the reels panting .
scary movie 2 tries very hard to live up to its original , but it falls very short
.
it 's a dissatisfying spectacle , a very weak sister of a very good movie .
the really scary aspect of this sequel is how disappointing it really is .

SOLUTION:
N