Home Alone: The Holiday Heist

• Also known as Home Alone 5
• Directed by Peter Hewitt
• November 25, 2012
• Based on Home Alone by John Hughes
• ABC

A kid trying to catch ghosts learns the noises he is hearing are a trio of bumbling art thieves. Was this a Halloween movie originally?

Where to start with Home Alone: The Holiday Heist? The daughter is rude. The son is a videogame addict. The dad is generally clueless. And the mom seems pretty uninvolved with the goings-on of the family. That’s what I gathered from the first few minutes of this.

The premise of the movie is that there are burglars who believe a priceless work of art is hidden within a house that a family has just moved into so they are going to break in and steal it. Why? Because it was once owned by a notorious bootlegger. At this point the house is believed haunted by the locals and eventually new resident Finn Baxter (Christian Martyn) as well. That makes you wonder why this is set at Christmas and not Halloween. I’m left with the feeling this was intended as a Halloween film and somebody simply slapped the Home Alone name on it and pushed the story back to Christmas.

The central character Finn is so convinced that the house is haunted by a gangster with a lame leg that will smother him in his sleep that he sets traps to catch the ghost such as a blanket and a taser. Not only does he believe in the supernatural, but he knows nothing about it. How would a blanket or even a taser do anything to something like a ghost? 

Obviously the work of art is in the house. That’s fine but it also looks like a piece of crap. I don’t see it as a priceless work of art. It looks like something quickly painted in an afternoon by a middle school kid. The description head thief Sinclair (Malcolm McDowell) gives makes it sound like a piece much finer than it actually turns out to be. To help in that department the frame the painting as a lost work of Edvard Munch.

What’s a Home Alone movie without the kid learning something from an adult and adult learning something from the kid? Here Finn befriends a videogame addict in college. He’s going to be alone on Christmas because he has no money to fly home. The actor looks to be in his early 30s. How long has he been in college?

With the feeling of a Halloween movie forced into Christmas Home Alone: The Holiday Heist leaves a little something to be desired. The push to make the house creepy comes off sounding like the setup from a family friendly Halloween special. Malcolm McDowell outclasses everyone here with his performance. Eddie Steeples as Hughes is ill cast despite his comedic abilities and Debi Mazar as Jessica I just found grating. Christian Martyn does well enough but his Finn selectively lacks knowledge. Finn’s friendship with neighbor kid Mason (Peter DaCunha) is there to show character growth but Mason is just weird and they never actually have a moment where they bond. It is just done because it is obligatory. They are a weird neighbor kid and that’s it.

I understand the Christmas party was to get the parents out of the house so the kids could be home alone. I just think the film spent a little bit too much time on something that didn’t strongly connect to the home alone aspect of the story. The mother did not improve her work situation. The only plus of the whole scene is to watch Ed Asner play a drunken crank though him playing a crank was nothing unusual.

Home Alone: The Holiday Heist is a movie you put on while the family is hanging out together. It’s nice background noise but nothing that will draw attention away. Safe and forgettable.