Review: Home Alone 2

#116 - Home Alone 2: Lost in New York


Home Alone 2 continues Kevin McCallister's bad luck when it comes to family vacations. When Kevin's family is rushed, yet again, the morning their plane leaves, they separate from Kevin in the airport and he ends up on a plane to New York instead of Florida. When he arrives in New York, he automatically begins stirring up trouble in the city. Pretending that he is on a business trip with his father, he checks into an expensive suite at the most prestigious hotel in Manhattan: The Plaza. He uses his father's credit card and cash to explore New York, until the concierge at the hotel discovers that the credit card has been reported stolen. The police track the credit card to The Plaza, and Kevin's parents arrive to bring him home...trouble is, the concierge has scared Kevin away. Kevin runs into his old burglar buddies, Marv and Harry, the night they are robbing a toy store. Kevin leads them on a chase through the streets of New York, and challenges them to his crazy antics again. Harry and Marv are outsmarted...again...and Kevin reunites with his family.

There are aspects of this film that are really funny, but ultimately the audience just sits through a less funny version of the original film. The plot is predictable and follows the exact same conflicts and story twists that happened to Kevin in Chicago. 1) The family wakes up late and has to rush to the airport. 2) They leave Kevin behind. 3) Kevin talks to adults as if he's an adult while purchasing items. 4) He meets an older man that is sweet and befriends him. 5) He runs into Marv and Harry, and the exact same break in scene from Home Alone is reenacted in a new location. 6) Kevin's family eventually reaches him and takes him home. 7) Kevin calls Marv and Harry "a horse's ass" again. 8) Oh yeah, and Kevin even tricks people by using film clips from his favorite gangster movie.
The film, overall, is quite boring to watch. The only new plot points that are introduced are that Kevin ends up in NYC instead of being left at home, he cons a well-known hotel into thinking he's staying there with his father, and the pigeon lady in the park...which has no purpose at all...except to add one more element to the attack scene on Harry and Marv. When you really think about it though, the pigeon lady is the equivalent of the old man in the first film. She saves Kevin from the burglars, just like the old man did.
Seriously, there is no way that a 10-year-old boy would be able to survive in Manhattan on his own for as long as Kevin does. Especially without a red flag going up and someone noticing. Kevin's father is supposed to come down and sign papers for the hotel, if that hadn't happened within a few days, the hotel's security staff would've checked out the surveillance cameras to back up Kevin's story. Also, in New York, if someone was stealing items off of people as obviously as Marv was doing at the ice rink and on the street, they would've been either A) punched in the face...which that lady on the street corner did or B) arrested by an officer that would be flagged down by someone.

I just try my hardest to love this movie as much as the original, and I can't. It capitalizes on everything that made the first movie great, but instead of making it new and fresh, they literally do the exact same thing again.

**And I know it's 100% for the audience to understand that Kevin arrives in New York while at the airport, but if he is landing in LaGuardia, you can't see Manhattan from any window at all, let alone an entire city view of Midtown. It made me sad thinking for all these years that when I arrived at LaGuardia I'd be able to see a skyline view of the city...and then wasn't able to when I actually was there.

I give Home Alone 2: Lost in New York 3 out of 5 stars.