Lost in NYC
Kevin and company are on their way to Florida. Due to a terrible mix-up, Kevin gets on a plane to NYC instead of going with his parents. Making the best of it, and armed with cash and credit, Kevin aims to contact his parents and get reunited. In the meantime, while he is waiting, his old buddies the ‘Wet Bandits’ (Harry and Marv),who are still recovering from their previous run-in with Kevin, are in NYC at the same time about to make a holiday heist. Kevin must elude the bandits and stop them before it’s too late.
Chris Columbus and John Hughes did their best to recreate the holiday magic that our favorite panicked boy, Kevin (played by Macaulay Culkin), did the first time around. The problem is that the first movie was barely believable, as any parent couldn’t imagine leaving a child behind. What offset that horrible realization was the clever traps that Kevin setup for Harry and Marv. That comedy completely made up for how terrible it would be to leave a child alone in a house. Hughes and Columbus had to figure out how to top that, or at the very least even that out. You simply cannot recreate or match what the first one was. Putting Kevin alone in New York isn’t cool and isn’t safe at all; no matter what traps he sets up. The biggest issue is that the first movie was built around a world that was quite restricted. You basically have the entire story playing out within a large house. This time around the area is considerably bigger, New York City, which is way too big for the type of story they’re trying to tell. The city is way too big to have Kevin accidentally run into the antagonists. Add that to the problem of Kevin not getting to his destination immediately or acting like a child who was actually lost or separated from his parents. Anyway, that’s a major flaw in the storyline and one that couldn’t be corrected once it was decided upon.
The good parts of the movie are that Culkin is still cute and brilliant in his role as Kevin. He’s a bit more grown up and his acting is certainly more solid. He’s certainly nowhere near the line-reading 10 year-old he was in the first film. The second plus in this film is the acting from Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern. Both rekindle the best violent comedy that one should expect. I miss Pesci in such roles, as he captures the best humor from what people consider one of the most squeaky, violent Italians out there. I see him in GoodFellas before Home Alone, but enjoy him in this offbeat comedic role.
As for the blu-ray, much like the original Home Alone, 20th Century Fox has put together a very pretty blu-ray with Home Alone 2. It visually looks sharp and the audio is fantastic. I like what they’ve done and I’m very impressed with the effort. For a film that didn’t do so well as a follow-up, it was nice to see Fox treated the movie right. Most studios who have ‘not-so-great’ films generally don’t put effort in the transfer; thankfully that isn’t the case here.
Regretfully, there are no special features.