Home Sweet Home Alone (aka Home Alone 6: The Search for More Money)

briany

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYtIRFTjYJQ

Hands up who's looking forward to this?

Main kid looks incredibly annoying. Rehashed plot (naturally). Just a corporate remake with no soul whatsoever, made as a blatant appeal to nostalgia. And the worst thing is that it'll probably do good business at the box office.

S.M.B.

Box office? Is it not a Disney+ exclusive?

I knew this was on the horizon but I had no idea as to who was involved both behind and in front of the cameras. What an utterly bizarre combination of cast, crew and concept.

Come back Mccauley Culkin! All is forgiven!

Seth Brundle

No big names in it makes me wonder if all the actors Disney approached turned this down

briany

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118021074#Comment_118021074

Right you are about the streaming thing. I wonder if that'll make it more or less of a chance that they'll carry on with the franchise?

It's not really a surprise that this would eventually be rebooted. Hollywood has no sentiment about any film's sanctity if they think there's a few quid to be made. It's a business, after all.

But in some ways, the desire to make money makes this film all the more bizarre because the execution looks so utterly cack-handed. If they made something with due care, it could have been a nice love-letter to the original film. The trailer looks to have all the comic potential of South Park's fictional film, The Carrot, starring Rob Schneider (rated PG-13).

Slydice

Saw Grace doing a review of this trailer on youtube from a USA perspective and she was like.. the kid having an English accent .. just felt wrong..

I was like.. still picking my jaw off the ground from seeing Aisling Bea speak but words coming out in an English accent 😱

briany

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118021193#Comment_118021193

Aisling Bea has had a decent career in America going for herself. I'm surprised that she looked at this film and thought it the right move, unless there was so much money on the table that she just thought, 'feck it'.

Agent Coulson

No mid level actor wants to turn down Disney as the next call from Disney could be for the money train MCU.

johnny_ultimate

I mean, the series has had three absolutely terrible sequels before this - one of which even somehow got a theatrical release (I recall seeing it as a kid in the cinema). Not that the first two films are exactly canonical masterpieces either, as much as I enjoyed them as a kid (great John Williams score, mind you).

It's hardly the most sacred of cows, even if Disney is hollowing it out and exploiting it further for cheap streaming festive gruel.

S.M.B.

Yeah, the original Home Alone is certainly no sacred cow. I had no intention of watching this but the above trailer has actually piqued my interest.

Regardless of the end product, there's enough there to get me watching. At the very least it'll work as a further case study on Disney's fondness for a Legacy Sequel.

Penn

It's the kind of thing people will check out because they already have Disney+ anyway, but the originals will still be the ones on in the background on Xmas/Stephen's Day when everyone's recovering from The Big Feed™

Elmo

I think it will possibly be better than the 2 made for TV movies.

I am surprised that the film doesn't understand the original 2 movies (though this is only going from the trailer)

Macauly Culkin was a very good find (he'd already starred in Uncle Buck) but while he was clearly a precocious child he was able to deliver in the role, I think he sets a high bar for any child actor.

The first film has so much going for it, while the family might be rich everyone you'd find in a family is represented; the obnoxious uncle, the absent minded mother, the aloof father (I mean he doesn't follow her home!), the older hip teenage sister, his younger siblings/cousins who are only there to tease and insult, the bumbling pizza boy, the criminals while played for laughs are played as adults most of the time, the lonely old man who befriends Kevin so that he can rescue him....

.... everything down to the young store clerk who wants to make sure he's okay ...

Yes he is cheeky but he learns he miss his family .....

It's feel good shmaltz, but it is amazing.

Perhaps I am too hard on the above trailer, Aisling Bee's accent is terrible.

briany

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118022592#Comment_118022592

The first film is well-written, well-cast, well-acted, well-shot and well-scored. It was made smack dab in that roughly ten year period where John Hughes could do (almost) no wrong as a screenwriter. You can look at it in the first ten minutes, sense this is a well put together film and, so, be forgiving of the more unrealistic aspects of the film, like the logistics of some of the booby traps Kevin sets up, especially that blowtorch one, but the blowtorch is so well-played by Pesci, that most are probably laughing too hard to care.

briany

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118021749#Comment_118021749

It's not a sacred cow, no, but this would have come out 30 years after the original, if production weren't delayed by covid. With that anniversary milestone there was an opportunity to make something a bit special instead of some rushed, meh, whatever thing and maybe even bring on board a few new subscribers who'd have previously been on the fence about getting the service.

JP Liz V1

..

Agent Coulson

Those old enough to remember Grange Hill during it's great years.

Roland alone.

CastorTroy

Just be sure to pronounce it Ro-Land

speedboatchase

The plot does not make sense in 2021. I at least thought that maybe the family would be stuck on a plane for the entire flight and be unable to call etc (which may be partially true because why would an American family go to Tokyo for Christmas - purely for that weird KFC tradition?), but come on, the kid would have a phone and the Mam would have him stay with the neighbours temporarily.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118038426#Comment_118038426

Ive not read the plot, but Home Alone in 2021 makes zero sense. In a world where you can whatsapp your sister from another room, your family can't get far enough away from home in time to become unreachable.

briany

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118044126#Comment_118044126

Maybe alongside the more conventional, anodyne events of the film, the USA is subject to a cyber attack from China which knocks out the entire country's telecommunications network, and the film keeps on cutting back and forth between the kid besting the burglars and a general at the Pentagon making angry phone calls, but then gets even angrier when he remembers the phone isn't even working. Eventually the boy discovers a ham radio in the attic, wires it up, somehow knows the frequency to get in touch with the coast guard, and Christmas is saved. They should have given me a job punching up this script. 😉

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118044409#Comment_118044409

For the first few lines I thought you were summarising the plot for me, and it sounded plausible(plausible for the 6th(?) sequel to a cheap movie. )

Film Writer: Theres this kid, he's left alone on Christmas Day

Film Exec: No, its been done.

Writer: And he has 24 hours to stop nuclear war with China!

Film Exec: By jove, I think you've got it! Take me money! Make this sensational idea a reality.

CastorTroy

So "Home Alone 7: WarGames"?

I'm sure they'll come up with some reason why he can't use one of many ways to communicate. Like you can always tell when someone checks their phone in a horror or even when their car breaks down that they'll either have no service or dead battery.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118045747#Comment_118045747

"Mom took all the phone chargers with her"

Dundundun!

Let's just ignore the fact you can buy a new one in most shops for a few euro.

Thinkingaboutit

I hope there's a Donald Trump cameo.

briany

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118047526#Comment_118047526

"Dammit! They're trying to steal this family's valuables, just like the crooked Demo-rats stole the 2020 election! Not on my watch! I'm suing!"

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118047526#Comment_118047526

His hands are too small to operate a ham radio.

S.M.B.

My memory of the plot details of the original are a little fuzzy but I'm not really seeing how the concept could be considered bullet proof 30 years ago yet it's plausibility in modern times is a potential stumbling block?

johnny_ultimate

I can’t believe I’m defending this piece of ****, but couldn’t the kid just… not answer the phone? I mean the trailer does a pretty good job at making it look like he’s a little brat relishing the prospect of being home alone.

bnt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118047510#Comment_118047510

Ever been to suburbia in the USA? You can't get to the shops without a car. I have friends just south of Houston, and there are literally no sidewalks once you get to the edge of housing community. No corner stores of any sort either. If I tried walking to a store from my friends' house, someone would call the cops on the apparently homeless person walking inches away from trucks on the road.

Aisling's accent in the trailer just throws me off. In the house before they depart, she sounds somewhat Irish, but something happens on the plane trip to Japan. But complaints that the kid is annoying? I thought that was the point.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118061675#Comment_118061675

Oh yeah. I think we forget just how pedestrianised our country is compared with the US. As you say many suburbs and districts simply don't have any sidewalks and nearby shops are a drive away. Unless you're bang in the inner city, where a bodega is around the corner, you're stuck without a car (heck there's a long sordid history about this: the country used to have a great tram and rail network til the car lobby had them dismantled and replaced with highways, often displacing whole [predominantly black] neighborhoods).

Uh, so Home Alone. It looks like rubbish but the title says number 6? Yeah this series doesn't deserve this level of inspection given we're already this far from the original everyone has seen (and I daresay few here have seen the other 4)

Elmo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118062095#Comment_118062095

The 2nd one isn't that bad, the hotel characters aren't great and it is a cc of the original.

I tried to watch the other 3 ...

Very difficult to recreate Home Alone ... You're only just misusing a good film for the money in the hope of nostalgia.