Home Sweet Home Alone

• Directed by Dan Mazer
• November 12, 2021
• Based on Home Alone by John Hughes
• Disney+

A married couple about to lose their home tries to steal back a valuable heirloom on Christmas. How do you make a movie where nobody is likeable in any aspect?

In the Home Alone series I have finally come to Home Sweet Home Alone. I hadn’t heard many good things about this movie. Who really has? That’s why I watched it. Not because I wanted to hate it. I was curious if it was as rough as people were leading me to believe.

I think in some instances they were quite kind. From the get-go none of the characters are really likable or even though unlikeable done in such a way you want to know what happens to them. Most are at best irritating or generally just terrible people. Not criminally terrible but people that you wouldn’t wanna expose others that you actually care about too. How can you make an entire movie populated with characters like that? Ask director Dan Mazer and writers Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell.

You need to care about the characters. You need to either hate them so much that you want to see what happens or care about them so much you want to see what happens but if you just find them irritating the credits are more important than the events that occur to them.

Our central kid Max Mercer (Archie Yates) gets left home as the family goes to festive Tokyo for the holidays. Why? Just because they need to get the characters out of the country. But then again I probably would leave any member of the Mercer Family home if I was traveling overseas because I’d want to enjoy myself.

Each character the longer they are on screen becomes less and less likable. I cannot bring this up enough becomes it is THE problem here. Once it reaches a point where you hate these complete works of fiction even the couple who were simply trying to save their home become unlikable. The wife seems to dislike her husband and is curious why she even married him. The husband is just a complete moron who has no clue that his field has completely left him behind. Members of both families are so self-involved that they have no idea just how they are bothering others. Others are just shallow or superficial. Like Kenan Thompson’s real estate agent character Gavin Washington.

At the start Max and his mom (Aisling Bea) use a house showing by Jeff and Pam McKenzie (Rob Delaney and Ellie Kemper respectively) to use the bathroom. Max gets upset over not getting a sugary drink he wants so it looks like he picks an antique doll to hide because the kid is a brat. Pam and Jeff believe he stole it and wishing to save their home try to take it back. Are they supposed to be the bad guys or is the kid supposed to be the bad guy? Max’s inability to listen long enough leads him to believe Pam and Jeff are kidnapping him to sell to a grandmother to be put on display while occasionally dusted. Is Max stupid?

Congrats on having Devin Ratray return as Buzz McCallister who is now a local cop being tormented every Christmas by Kevin who currently runs an alarm company with a home alone call. Was that meant to be funny? Is that the best they could do? It is a weak connection to the originals.

The movie itself embodies none of the spirit of the originals. It’s quite possibly the inverse of any of the other films. This is not some hilarious misunderstanding between two parties that leads to comedic results. This is a jerk of a kid screwing over two jerky desperate people and their kids. Everybody is mean spirited or inconsiderate just because.

The value object at the middle of this strikes me as improbable. I’m not sure how any toy designer or manufacturer puts a doll’s head on upside down. A misprint of some kind or incorrect colorization but an upside-down head? They really did not think about this.

By the end of Home Sweet Home Alone everybody’s friends and everybody’s happy and in a one year later post we seeing everybody getting along great. Where is the growth like in the originals? What do they learn? I don’t know.

Home Sweet Home Alone was a difficult watch. There is nothing to like here. Don’t torture yourself by watching this.