Home Sweet Home Alone – Plenty of Squandered Potential (Early Review)

Just to get this out of the way at the beginning – Home Sweet Home Alone isn’t a very good film. Instead, it is a compilation of sparks where some come to fruition while others recede from fizzled potential.

The film marks the sixth installment in the franchise and features an apparent need to depart from the well-trodden formula of its predecessors. In an attempt to modernize this formula, the film instead centers around Pam (Kemper) and Jeff (Delaney), a married couple, seeking to save their home after being forced to place it on the market due to life circumstances. Through a case of mistaken identity and burglary, their lives intertwine with that of Max (Yates), a precocious child, who is left alone for the holidays due to his mother and family forgetting him in their haste to make their Christmas trip. Mix in a dash of hijinks and pinch of pratfalls and there is the essence of what Home Sweet Home Alone truly is.

While the shift in the plot is a welcome change, any goodwill quickly fades as the film relies on a script that is simple and ultimately fails its immensely funny and talented cast. Actors like Kemper, Delaney, Pete Holmes, Andy Daly, and Kenan Thompson should get to offer something that is entertaining to both children and parents alike but are forced to play their roles with little to no expression beyond their lines. This is more noticeable as ample opportunities arise that would have benefitted from further improvisation or rewrites instead of appearing to go with the first option and moving on. Furthermore, Yates’ ability to carry this film as the main semi-protagonist greatly suffers through his lack of charisma and charm. Say what you will about the previous iterations, but each features a child actor from which the film is clearly built around and whose sole purpose is to carry the project from start to finish. Home Sweet Home Alone takes the opposite approach as the very piece that is integral to a successful albeit tolerable film seems to be a casting afterthought.

Easily the two strongest pieces of the film revolve around John Debney’s score which serves as a beautiful homage to the first two Home Alone films and the return of Buzz McCallister (Devin Ratray) who showed glimpses of the old ne’er-do-well from the 1990s. Despite these setbacks, the film still entertains through the sheer comedic star power present mixed with booby traps and pratfalls that no matter how many times are reimagined, never gets old. There is also an element of appreciation for slightly skewing the traditional plot that these films are typically based on and shifting towards a more interesting narrative that takes an extended time to develop but is nonetheless a different choice that doesn’t fully land but is a decent effort. Yet, there is a case that Home Sweet Home Alone is the perfect film to land where it has because there is essentially nothing at stake in terms of success or expectations, and is housed perfectly on a platform where the film can be discovered and viewed at any time without buyer’s remorse.

Overall, Home Sweet Home Alone does little to step out of line from the several other Disney+ films that have been developed for the streaming platform and seems destined to be comfortably lost in its already existing catalog. It does manage several laughs based on what the cast offers but those laughs are drowned out by the moments in-between that showcase the squandered potential from the comedians involved. This is further emphasized with the casting of Yates who is charming in sequences but seems ill-fit for the task of carrying the film.

In the end, the film had the chance to truly change the recipe for having forgotten youths go toe-to-toe with inserted bad guys with a holiday setting as a backdrop but instead takes chances in several areas that can be applauded for its attempt but not for sticking the landing.

still courtesy of Disney

Check out my Critics Without Credentials podcast on iTunes and Spotify.

If you liked this, please read our other reviews here and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter or Instagram or like us on Facebook.

Critics w/o Credentials

Trying my best to get all thoughts about TV and Film out of my head and onto the interweb.