Home Alone 2: Lost in New York: This is mostly punishment. I could be watching the original but I fell asleep so none of that. It's not a terrible sequel but it commits two of the crimes of nearly any sequel: it keeps almost all of the story of the original and and it decides to up the ante to an unnecessary scale. The problem is that it tries so hard to duplicate the formula of the original. Instead of the scary man who lost his family, we have the scary Bird Lady, the family rushes the same way as last time (they even invoke it with, "We did it again."), same thieves, same guy in the black and white gangster film. It's the equivalent of making a casserole with your Christmas leftovers. It's all the old flavor, meshed together in such a way that you believe no one will notice but, really, anyone with the slightest bit of perception will.The other problem is that, due to the success of the original, this one is filled with commercials. We have some prominent soda drinks inserted. Visa is also up and forward though in this case, I don't think I would want to be billed as the major credit card that can be used in fraud. Then there are the things that you know they were hoping to spin off into toys and brand them with the Home Alone logo. I know they did with the Talk Boy. Its just a audio tape recorder, just a little more portable.
The cast does try its best. It has Tim Curry as our semi-villain. Its freaking Tim Curry! What's not to love? Along the way, we also get a surprisingly not freaking terrible Rob Schneider. I guess that's a trait he would master becoming as the decade went on. Catherine O'Hara, like the original, is a highlight. The only problem is that no lesson was learned from the original so we don't get as much of a focus on her. Those were the best parts of the original. Those were the parts that should have won her an Oscar. Here, definitely not the case. She's pure supporting without her own B plot really. Brenda Fricker as the Pigeon Lady is also a pretty good role though she also exists as mostly just a Deus Ex later in the film.
A thing the film does well is give us a travelogue of New York. The problem is that many of the shots are practically stock footage. Then we have late night New York. Yeah, they really went with every pre-Guilianai stereotype here. They just made everyone into an evil monster with no strand of human dignity. For that matter, there are less hookers than I would have figured. My major problem is that there are hookers in a Children's film. At the very least Kevin learned a vague lesson from the previous movie. He is a little less crazy with a stranger. In fact, we kinda get a indictment of the effort to clean up New York. The Pigeon Lady talks about people ignoring her like they don't want her to be part of her city. However, outside of having a little kid who's going to be in Chicago in a few days as a friend, she's no better off.
My biggest problem with the entire film is that it goes for much more violence than the first entry.The first is but it's not one of the more prominent parts of the film. Here, we have people sliding around, falling on their butts every few minutes. Then we have the villains, the robbers from the first one, who are very much going to murder Kevin at multiple points. The violence doesn't even seem to be rooted in reality anymore. Almost everything the robbers survived in the first film would have worked in reality. The second one, they should be dead and Kevin having claimed his first lives. It becomes a cartoon and that's just wrong.
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| Yeah, this is some bad Photoshop, I know |
Wait I just realized. This kid is going to grow up to become Jigsaw, the Murderer in the Saw Franchise. I'm calling it right now. After two years of his parents mistreating him and being accosted be men that have done him and society wrong, he changes his name to John Kramer and eventually uses his training to kill people he thinks are sick. Yeah, Home Alone 2 should be retitled Saw 0.
I'll give the film this though: Everything that happens is slightly less dependent on coincidence. My biggest complaint of the original is the circumstances surrounding how things occur is that they are so damn dependent on coincidences. Here, not so much. I do have a complaint that this time it's dependent on Kevin being a jerkwad. In the original, he believes his family has disappeared. In this one, he deliberately decides to be a jerk. Everything would otherwise have been resolved in the first half hour. The parents aren't the negligent ones this time. Regardless, their after Christmas gift is going to be a visit from protective services and being judged to be unfit parents. It's a shame since it's not that bad, just kinda boring and overly violent for a kids movie.
Non-Viewing Thoughts: I wonder what a Turducken tastes like? For that matter, I've never had duck so I'm kinda intrigued to take a taste of Donald also.
Notable Commercials: The guy in the Allstate Insurance commercials is a Christmas Tree for the season. I am really thinking that this is just a mentally ill man who actually does believe he's a Christmas Tree or a teenage girl or any of these crazy things.
Also, can I just say that nearly every show on AB Family seems to be stupid girls pretending to be the Desperate Housewives? I mean, the plots sound almost as nonsensical as the ABC show. We got Switched at Birth which is commendable for using deaf actors but it looks like they're still going for teen melodrama. Then there's Pretty Little Liars which is the main offender. It just looks so bad. Little starlets who have no real talent that will still be visible within ten years. I'm just happy there's no "A Very Pretty Little Liar Christmas."
Late-Christmas Ideas: A trip to New York or, even better, someone to pay for my April trips to Boston and Chicago. As is, I guess I'll settle on some firm commitments on either. Or a digital tape recorder. It will help with some things I got planned for April.
The Tally
Mountain Dews Left: 12
Energy Drinks Left: 2
Cups of Coffee drank: 0
Pumpkin Pie Left: 3/4th of pie
Sanity Rating (1 being a safe, Sane Christmas, 10 being spending Christmas with Freddy Krueger): 6
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