HOME ALONE 2: Lost in New York - You can't go Home Alone again.

HOME ALONE 2: Lost in New York - Alone again, naturally.

Ever get that feeling of deja vu while watching a movie? A feeling like, "I've seen this all before"? Well if not then you definitely have never seen Home Alone and it's highly unnecessary and oddly titled sequel, HOME ALONE 2: Lost in New York.

It's one year later after the events in Home Alone and little Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) is still as alive, despite being saddled with the world's worst parents. To celebrate the anniversary of their previous year's disastrous Christmas mishap, the McCallisters (John Heard & Catherine O'Hara) decide to take their 27 children on a fun-filled Christmas family outing to sunny Florida. Twenty-seven children did I say? OOPS! KEVIN!

Yes, poor little Kevin has managed to slip through the cracks again and ends up in New York City before either of his clueless and irresponsible parental morons notice. Now at this point, any child raised by someone with even the slightest parenting skills, especially one that had previously been left home alone, would know to find a police officer or some person in authority and tell them, "Hi, my name is Kevin McCallister and my parents are idiots. They let me get on the wrong plane and now I'm lost, can you help me?" But of course this would take away from all the hijinks and fun to follow. So little Kevin does what any 9-year old lost in a city of 8 million strangers would do, he checks into a fancy Manhattan hotel using his dad's credit card and sets about recreating his antics from his previous home alone adventure.

So on the story goes. Little Kevin sets up shop in an expensive hotel room and goes about tormenting Hotel Concierge Tim Curry in the process. Later Kevin shows a glimmer of intelligence as he seeks out his uncle who lives in New York, unfortunately he runs afoul of the two bumbling crooks Marv and Harry from the first movie played by Daniel Stern and Joe Pesci. When Kevin does arrive at his uncle's home, he finds that the house is empty and being remodeled. So Kevin, in order to defend himself against the two hammer-bags, Marv and Harry, sets about a plan to defeat them and destroy most of his uncle’s home in the process. The dynamic dunderheads, Marv and Harry, follow little Kevin back to his uncle's house where he has prepared a funhouse of amusingly painful, not to mention borderline homicidal, traps and snares. The crooks, having been in, but apparently not having seen the first movie, fall into their old habit of getting their butts kicked. Kevin defeats the crooks through a series of wacky burns, funny flesh wounds, campy broken bones and looney head trauma. Eventually Kevin's numbskull family shows up and all is right with the world again. That is of course, if your definition of right is sending a neglected child back to live with his half-wit parents.

Nearly every scene of HOME ALONE 2: Lost in New York, including the jokes, the gags, even much of the dialogue, is lifted straight from the first film. It's pretty obvious that filmmakers John Hughes and Chris Columbus were just looking to cash in on the success of Home Alone by pumping out a hastily made and ill-conceived sequel. Whereas the first movie was fresh, novel and at times even cute, Home Alone 2 is stale and predictable at best. At times Home Alone 2 seems cruel especially during the "Kevin bests the dumb crooks again" scenes.

This film is a depressing, far less cute recap of Home Alone and should be avoided at all costs. Fortunately, or maybe not so much, it does seem at least that Home Alone 2: Lost in New York did apparently fulfill Culkin's contract with Satan thus freeing him to make far less successful films like Richie Rich and The Good Son. While other even less necessary sequels would be made, they would be made without Culkin, thus allowing him to become a drug abusing has-been by the age of 15! I blame the parents.