Home Sweet Home Alone

Dir: Dan Mazer

I hate to break it to you, but you’re not ten years old anymore. That’s why Home Sweet Home Alone isn’t much cop. I was nine, right in the demographic sweet spot, when the original film came out in 1990. It used to be a holiday perennial for me; a fun bit of seasonal slapstick, but it’s been almost 25 years since I last saw it, and let’s be honest, I’ve aged out of it. So, likely, have you. With that in mind, let's try to come at this ‘reimagining’ with some perspective rather than the cries of “my childhood is being destroyed” that greeted the trailer.

The bones of the story are the same as ever; harried parents (Aisling Bea and Andy Daly) go on holiday, accidentally leaving their 10-year-old son (Jojo Rabbit’s Archie Yates as Max Mercer) at home. While he’s there, two burglars attempt to break in and steal a valuable doll they believe is in the house, and Max has to defend the home.

There is an interesting idea here. Heaven forbid we overanalyse the sixth film in the Home Alone series, but the script electing to centre not so much on Max as on the burglars adds a thin veneer of class commentary. The usual things: Max over-indulging in sweets and doing all the things he can only do when he finds himself home alone (a fairly charming sequence, actually); Max fighting off the burglars with some extremely painful-looking slapstick (a pool ball gun...ouch) are present and correct, but it’s who the thieves are that makes this a bit different.

Ellie Kemper and Rob Delaney play Pam and Jeff McKenzie, they’re not criminals, but a teacher and an unemployed tech support worker, who are having to sell the house they love because they can’t keep up with the mortgage. They discover that an ugly doll they own is worth more than $200,000 but they think Max has stolen it during an open house, hence their attempts to steal it back. This does contrast them with the obviously very financially comfortable Mercers (who have taken their extended family to a posh hotel in Tokyo over Christmas). It’s not exactly a scathing indictment of the inequities of the American economy, but at least some thought has gone into the backstory. Making Pam and Jeff first time criminals, as well as the film’s central figures, is an interesting change of focus and explains why they are so bad at crime. Kemper and Delaney are easily the film’s best asset, with Kemper’s generally friendly persona working nicely in a fun scene with a cameoing actor playing a cop she has to throw off the scent. The two also commit to the bit when it comes to the cartoon violence of the break in, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I chuckled a couple of times.

On the downside, this focus on the burglars leaves Max’s story aneamic. We never really get to know him, beyond the fact he’s a 10-year-old kid, and Yates, who is a bit flat with the dialogue, only gets one short sequence of having fun by himself in the house. The mayhem of the third act is inventive enough, but it’s all over very quickly and the film races towards a treacly ending with quite unbelievable haste. The few sequences in Tokyo offer the usually very funny Aisling Bea very little to do other than fret in an English accent. She and Max’s family are barely in the film more than the one joke members Pam and Jeff’s extended family, and this unbalances things a bit.

On the whole, if you’re coming at this as an eight to ten-year-old, I imagine you’ll have fun. It’s broad and silly, the slapstick is brief, but it works. Fans of the original will never give this the place the movie has in their hearts, but at least there is an interesting idea, and they might even get a laugh or two along with the kids.

★★