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The 90-minute movie is one of the most interesting modern anomalies in cinema. General thinking is that a feature film is a movie that lasts any length over 90 minutes and usually they will go longer as need be. The trick is, in that 90 minutes you need to fulfill all the basic storytelling principles without leaving the audience feeling like they were short changed because, especially recently, audiences have become more forgiving of two hour long, even two and a half hour long movies. Therefore, the 90-minute movie is a promise. It is a promise to the viewer that they will not have to commit the average length to get the full enjoyment out of a story.
Home Sweet Home Alone fails on almost every level, and that’s not even comparing it to the prior entries in this franchise. Since the movie is (some might say mercifully) so short, a lot of key information is crammed in through clunky, expository dialogue. Characters talk to each other like the actor wandered onto set while they were filming, and the director threw them into the scene on accident and everyone needs to explain their function in the movie. When the movie gives a more organic conversation to discuss who a character is, it is entirely inconsequential to the plot and can be removed from the movie with no real impact.
This movie tries to bank on nostalgia with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. It lifts musical cues, scenes, and dialogue shamelessly from the first Home Alone but does not have a point for it in the plot, especially considering the plot is not what the first one was. When the ending result is turning out like this, maybe reminding people of where this sixth entry came from almost 30 years ago isn’t the best idea.
The movie also flips the dynamic between the robbers and the kid who has been titularly left home alone. In the first five entries, there is something in the house that the robbers want, be it valuable objects, a piece of technology that was accidentally mixed up at the airport or a safe in the basement that contains a priceless painting. Here, the thieves had something stolen from them by the kid and are trying to steal it back from the kid. This could be interesting, however when the movie stumbles into the part that everyone is there to see (the kid boobytrapping the house and the thieves bungling through the traps), the flipped dynamic makes the scene uncomfortable.
When a movie is ultimately going to get to a point where carnage is going to be unleashed on a person or group of people, it is the movie’s job to make the audience feel that the level of cartoonish violence is warranted. Take John Wick for example; in the first twenty minutes the audience is introduced to his life after the death of his wife, the puppy his wife gave him to help him move on, and then the bad guy kills the puppy and steals his car. The audience now has a reason to root for him as he goes on to kill 77 people over the course of that movie.
In the first Home Alone, the audience is introduced to Marv and Harry as they are casing the house and breaking into other houses in the neighborhood. Neither Marv nor Harry are given anything redeeming in their character arc so when Kevin defends his home with the wrath of God in the Old Testament, it is perfectly fine for the audience to root for him. Here, Pam and Jeff (Ellie Kemper and Rob Delaney respectively) are just trying to get their own property back from this rich kid that stole it. It reframes the scene about why the violence around them is happening in such a way that it makes it uncomfortable to watch while the scene relishes what it is doing.
This movie is unwatchable. It is not funny, the violence is over the top and cringe-worthy and there isn’t anything redeemable to this movie to make it worth even a minute of the 90-minute runtime. If someone has Disney+ and wants to watch a Home Alone movie, there is Home Alone, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, and debatably Home Alone 3. In the grand scheme of things coming to Disney+ this weekend, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings or Jungle Cruise are much better uses of one’s time.
Rating: 1/10
