Home Alone 2 1992, Rated PG

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Starring Macaulay Culkin.

Macauley Culkin returns to the screen in this film as Kevin McAllister. Culkin's family decides to take another vacation together and, thanks to another untimely power outage, the family oversleeps again and, in their rush to make their plane, they leave Culkin behind. Again. Only this time, Culkin makes it to the airport with his family, he just can't quite make it onto the right plane. With the rest of his family traveling to Miami, the producers have Culkin mistakenly board a plane to New York City, and thus the 'Lost in New York' portion of the title comes into play. Once in New York, Culkin turns the tables on the adults, receives a scare from an elderly person he continually runs into (didn't he take anything with him from the first Home Alone?), and does battle with Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern, "the wet bandits", who have escaped from their prison, which apparently was in the state of New York. The only things that Hughes didn't bother to include in the sequel where John Candy's good-natured character, and the sense of family and Christmas that were present in Home Alone.

The complete lack of originality in Home Alone 2 wasn't the greatest problem with this film though--God knows Hollywood movies have survived without that quality in recent years--. No, Home Alone 2's biggest problem is that while Home Alone preached togetherness and the Christmas spirit, Home Alone 2 preaches hitting fellow human beings in the head with paint cans and shooting them with nail guns. This wouldn't be as large a problem if Home Alone 2 was set during the summer, or around Arbor Day, since there aren't many emotions people specifically associate with those times of year, but the Christmas season is different.

Ignoring, for the moment, the huge, consumer, retail marketing blitzes sent toward Americans, courtesy of big retail corporations, Christmas is a special time of year. It's the time of year when people put aside passed differences to come together, traverse great distances to be with loved ones; two qualities that were addressed and examined in Home Alone. And in this context, I found watching Culkin set up traps so that Daniel Stern will get hit in the balls frustrating and pointless. While there was some cartoonish violence in the original, it wasn't the whole point of the movie. This was precisely what Hughes and director Chris Columbus missed in this sequel and in Home Alone 3 , which is another matter entirely.

After screening Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, not only was I tremendously disappointed, I was disappointed by a film it felt as if I had already seen. Culkin's innocent charm is still present in this sequel, but the rest of the charm and Christmas sentiment included in the original has all but left. There are Three Stooges videos with more Christmas appeal, and less violence, than this movie.