 Homesweet Home Alone is the story of a sad man who wasted an hour and a half watching what he knew was going to be an absolute pile of crap. But how bad was it truly? And what will become of the man who's nothing more than an empty shell of a human? Well, let's find out in another episode of... Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, before I begin I should encourage you to subscribe to Adam Does Movies as I put out multiple videos a week about movie reviews, rants, content related to film. Check it out. I actually have done this shtick before, it's a call back to Home Alone 2, my favorite of the Home Alone movies, yes, even more than the first. I will be talking about that in a week or so, so definitely stick around. Also Buzz is in this new film, so it's relevant for that reason. He's a police officer and it even says McCallister right there and he references Kevin in this. I'm sorry, I should say there's going to be spoilers from the onset here. This is a terrible movie from every single way you look at it. It's just a bad, horrible, disgusting attempt at a film. They know it's bad, Disney's not even promoting it, it's nowhere to be found on their homepage, the date it comes out. Now it's possible when we get closer to Christmas they might spackle it on the home screen, but I just don't, I don't think they will. I think they know they have a turd on their hands and they want to wash that shit right off. Speaking of poop, there's fart jokes in this movie. That's the level we're at here. The Home Alone movies are childhood classics for a lot of people including myself. They've made several since. There was a third one that went to theaters with the new family and there was two more that went to ABC, I believe. They just kind of shat them out overnight without really saying much. And yet somehow, I won't say those are better than this one. I don't have a single care to give for any of them. But I will say the villains are better in those. The dude from Third Rock from the sun, French Stewart? Isn't one of them? How is he better? How is he better than what we have here? Well, I'll tell you, Ellie Kemper is the worst. Yeah, I said it. I said what some people are thinking and afraid to say. You might think, wow, that's a little weird for him to start with the villain of the picture instead of the main character. Well, she is the main character. She and Rob Delaney play a married couple who are trying to sell their home. Max Mercer and his mom stop by because he really has to go to the bathroom. So they pretend like they're interested in the house to use the facility. And they run into these people. There's an exchange of words. Max is a complete dick in this, by the way, just an absolute unlikable shit. And that's really sad for me to say about a child, about a boy who is probably charming and likable in other things. Actually, I know he is. I've seen him in other films. Here though, everybody is so unlikable. But I need to get back. I need to get back to Ellie Kemper first because that's where this starts. Who in Hollywood does this woman have dirt on? Is she the daughter of a financier or a queen of some sort? How is she in this industry? She's terrible in the office. One of the worst characters. I can't find a single thing to laugh at her about. She was terrible and unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and she's shit in this. Why do people like her? I apologize, Ellie Kemper. I'm sure you are a delight to be around in person. You're probably very funny. You're probably very charming, very lovable, down to earth. I don't think you're funny. And you are playing one of two characters where the comedy rests upon the shoulders of. And you're failing. You're dropping the ball. That's not to say Rob Delaney gets up any easier because he sure as hell doesn't. Not a single laugh is emitted from my body when he's on camera. The movie has zero creativity, zero thought or energy put into anything. It's just in and out in less than an hour and a half. The movie is one hour and 24 minutes long, yet it feels like an eternity to get through. I'd say it tries to emulate the formula of the first two movies, but does it? How could you fail? How could you miss so completely? The first two films have a magic to them. They have a wholesome spirit that shines through, that radiates throughout the McAllister home. Even though the people are rude and selfish to one another, there's still a kindred spirit to it all. There's still this family togetherness that you can see seep through the cracks. Kevin is a smartass, but he's justified. We see everything through his eyes. Yeah, he can be selfish for sure, but so is the rest of his family. So when he reacts the way he does, when he responds to situations the way he does, I say, yeah, Kevin, he kind of reminds me of Larry David and Curb Your Enthusiasm. I know Larry's kind of the bad guy, but oftentimes I'm like, yeah, he's sane and doing what no one has the courage to. He's in the right here. So is Kevin. Max isn't. Max is a jerk. He is not even provoked, and he acts like an ass. He's super rude to his mom. There's a scene early on when the mom is flailing to get everything done, and she's on the phone, and Max is sitting there. Mom, mom, look at me, mom. I'm the most important. She's clearly on the phone, you little dick. The worst part easily in the first two films, and thankfully it's not very long, is the lame come-to-Jesus moment. Kevin experiences with both the old man next door and the creepy pigeon lady. These moments are here to make Kevin more likeable, to have him grow as a character, to learn a little bit more about the holiday and what it means. And I thought they were maybe attempting to do this with Max, as he also runs into an old lady that's working at the toy drive. There's a bunch of children's play things being dropped off. I didn't want to use toy twice, and I couldn't think on the spot of another word. So I said child's play thing, like toy story. Anyway, he goes there, and he thinks it's just like a grab bag free for all, and a kid ends up dropping off of like a Nerf gun, and the woman even tells him what the stuff's for, and he ends up taking it without even a second thought. He learns nothing out of it. He lives in a goddamn mansion. The kid is spoiled beyond all comprehension. No issues bringing home another toy for Max. Goes well with his Lego set and his Hot Wheels racers. Just throw it in the pile. A little piece of shit. Earlier I said there was no creativity in this film. I take that back. There's one small little portion, where the film acknowledges the original by recreating one of those great black and white films they did in the movies, with the guy with the Tommy gun, and he gives them an account of 10, except this time it's a sci-fi rendition. I thought that was kind of cute, but then the movie immediately ruins it by acknowledging that this is a remake, and that remakes are almost never as good, so why even bother? Are you kidding me? The movie throws Buzz in, then calls itself a remake. What the hell are you? Well, I'll tell you what you are. You're soulless, you're lifeless, you're worthless, and you're a waste of my time. Thankfully, I'm probably one of six people that even knows it's on the app, and hopefully I'm only one of two that watched this monstrosity. The other being Ellie Kemper, of course. I know I'm coming off as a bit of a trout sniffer right now, and who cares about the plot, right? Who cares about all the family nonsense and whether or not the kids like it all? I'm here for the violence. I'm here for the pain and anguish. Well, you might as well leave, because there's none. Nothing that I would even consider remotely funny, at least. We have a combination of pratfalls that don't land, kind of a pun, and we have a bunch of CG nonsense. There's a scene where Max puts Mentos in soda bottles and throws them at the villain. He has like 30 of them up there, and he's just chucking them left and right, somehow getting the cap to just be on enough to hold the liquid, but not enough so it shoots out and goes everywhere. The execution's awful. There's one little morsel of a moment that could have worked really well. It's such an easy layup. There's a sequence where a choir is singing a lovely song, and that's juxtaposed with the two villains trying to climb over a wall. You have the beautiful thing going on over here, and then you jump cut to this ugly, messy disaster taking place. They're falling off the wall. They're trying to eke their way up. The problem is it's filmed so poorly with weird slow motion where it doesn't belong. Had the camera punched in more on Ellie Kemper, and you just saw the other guy fall, you just saw Delaney's body just go whoosh in front of the camera without really getting much information about what just happened, that would have been far funnier than being focused out and seeing him slow motion fall. It just doesn't work. And the sound effect crew must have taken the entire film off. They didn't bother to show up. Where are the hard punches? The smacks? The slaps? The slips? The falls? The bones breaking? None of it's present. It takes a full hour of the movie for the booby trap stuff to even kick in. There's nothing really before that of any sort of Pratt folly nature, no booby traps or anything. And then we only have about ten minutes of actual home invasion and it's done. The end of the movie, I don't even know where to begin. The basic plot is these people are trying to sell their house because they're in over their head. They have a doll that's supposedly worth over $200,000. They think Max stole the doll. We don't see Max steal it. I assumed he didn't because that would be a funny twist at the end. He didn't and it still wasn't funny. And then they become best friends. They have meals together. A year later, their house is perfect. It's fixed. The doll apparently sold for like half a million. They don't tell us but they're rich now. They're happy, I guess, is the moral of this story. Well, Adam, you don't have to watch the movie. It doesn't ruin the first two. I know it doesn't ruin the first two. I'm not upset about that. These remakes have happened so often now or sequels, I guess. This is a sequel, technically, that it doesn't bother me anymore. I know the original still exists. They're intact. They're still great. What bothers me is that talent, well, maybe not talent on this one. Time, money, crews, set pieces, stages, things that could have gone to some better art or a better movie in general. We're wasted here. We had to waste time and money and effort on this shoddy production. It's a disgrace to moviemaking. It's a disgrace to everything I hold dear with cinema. It's a monstrosity. It's a joke. But there's no laughs. Well, Disney's laughing, I guess. Disney's laughing. There's a scene in the film where the male dipshit gets hit in the head with one of the pool balls the kid's shooting out of his launcher. When he falls down, Max puts a VR headset on him. And so when he wakes up, he's in a dinosaur planet on the edge of a cliff. And like any even irrational adult, unless he has some sort of mental illness I don't know about, he would just take off the headset. He doesn't know what's on, he doesn't feel it. And he's just accepting that somehow he's been transported to the dinosaur era. And he's on a cliff. And so this happens, this is a scene that goes on for a little while. How dumb does the writer think the audience is? We're just willing to accept anything now. Like Home Alone was never built on plausibility, of course. I mean, they're absurd films that would kill any mortal human. But who cares if they're still likeability, charm, and a tiny bit of plausibility behind it? I believe that Harry and Marv were dumb enough to keep trying to break into the kid's house. I believe that they were stupid enough to fall for his obvious tricks. I don't believe Kevin could put a VR headset on Marv or Harry and they would just accept it and start walking into walls and things. Come on! Finally, the last thing that really drives me crazy is not only the fact that they're banking off the title, Home Alone. But that Home Alone 1 was a chore, that's putting it lightly. Home Alone 1 was a complete disaster to get off the ground. The movie killed the director, basically, trying to get this thing out the door. Fox was constantly on the verge of canceling this picture week to week. They didn't know if they were going to have funding anymore. They took months and months just to find the proper house they wanted to film at. And then they couldn't even film inside it because it was too small. They had to recreate the entire house inside of a gymnasium of an abandoned school where they set up office. That's insane! And so then to have a monster company like Disney get the rights because they purchased Fox and to just shit out whatever they want? No! I won't let go easy on this or anyone involved. This is ridiculous and insulting. And then to use the score, the iconic theme from John Williams to use dialogue written by the original masters. How dare you? How dare you? So that's Home Sweet Home Alone for the holidays. Fuck you, Disney. You could give $1 a month and become a member or 5 or 10 or 20. I mean, it goes a long way, honestly, to getting this stuff out. I'd appreciate it. Happy holidays!