Review: Home Alone 1, 2, and Whatever the Last One Was Reviewed (Spoilers)

You might be looking at this title and asking yourself: “What about the other Home Alone movies? Why only these three?”

Don’t worry I have an answer: These are the only movies in the Home Alone cinematic universe that I remember well enough to do a review on. I barely remember watching the third one and though I’ve seen reviews on the fourth and fifth ones (fun fact: I had no idea that there were six movies in this franchise, I thought there were only four), I have never watched them. So, let’s get into the three that actually matter.

#1: Home Alone

This is the best one in the entire franchise. Macaulay Culkin (yes, I had to Google how to spell his name while writing this) is great in this movie as Kevin, being absolutely perfect for playing the role of a witty 90’s kid who somehow has an advanced knowledge of the laws of physics and enough time, money, strength, and supplies to set up a Rube Goldberg machine of death for the comically evil cartoon villains to stumble through. Many of the jokes still land, the score is good, and unlike Home Alone 6, there’s adequate set-up and payoff to make you root for Kevin. His family treats him as if he’s invisible most of the time unless they need a scapegoat, which justifies his wish that he could be left home alone, and him having to defend his house from the robbers while his parents are gone makes sense (though the way he goes about it is questionable, but funny). We also see him beginning to miss his parents and his mom’s reaction to realizing that she’s left him home alone, which makes the end of the movie really sweet, though how he found time to clean up the mess the Wet Bandits left behind is beyond me.

This movie also inspired Mark Rober to create his glitter bomb series so that’s another point for it.

#2: Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

Home Alone is the only movie in the series where the kid is actually left in a home alone situation that’s serious. From what I’ve heard, the other home alone movies just have the kid alone for a 6-8-hour workday because he has chicken pox, he’s not even alone since he has a butler, or (in Home Alone 6, which I hated), he has multiple ways of communicating with his parents. In this movie, he’s lost in New York (hence the name), but it was still a fun watch with a lot more jokes in it and the same heartwarming ending as the first movie.

However, the biggest problem that I have with this movie is that Kevin’s justification for essentially killing the Wet (now, Sticky) Bandits at least 20 times each is less understandable than it was in the first movie. In the first movie, everything was done in self-defense. They were trespassing into his house, planning on robbing it and he needed to keep them from going through with their plan. In this movie, they’re going to rob a toy store, which, while evil, still doesn’t justify Kevin luring them to his little house of slapstick horror and almost killing them a million times. He’s not doing this in self-defense. He could’ve easily taken the recording of their plan to the police and let them handle it. While funny, Kevin’s Rube Goldberg machine of death almost makes you feel bad for the bandits.

#3: Home Sweet Home Alone

I.

Hate.

This.

Movie.

This rendition of Home Alone was produced by the wonderful people at Disney and was released on Disney+ in 2021, right before we decided to cancel our subscription. It relies way too much on nostalgia for the original, the main kid is a brat from the outset with no justification for acting the way he does, and the “villains” of this movie are not only sympathetic since they’re two people just trying to keep their house, but are stupid since they know that the kid is still home so why are they breaking in in the first place? The jokes are hardly chuckle worthy, the slapstick isn’t funny because you just feel bad for the “villains” and is somehow more nonsensical than in the first movie, there isn’t much of a heartwarming ending, they put the main kid in a dress and heels, and it was obviously written by a millennial trying to connect to Gen-Z and Gen Alpha and they failed miserably, making it even more cringe. The plot isn’t even that suspenseful since the main kid is surrounded by things that connect to the internet that he could call, email, or text his mom with to let her know that he’s home alone and needs her to come back to get him.

Now repeat after me: the only Home Alone movies that should exist are the first and second ones. Everything else belongs in a dumpster fire.

Until next time,

M.J.