Home Alone/Home Alone 2

Yep, today for the holiday season I decided to talk about these two films from my childhood, which I both saw on the big screen with my parents way back when. The first one I was pretty familiar with as I had seen parts or all of it a number of times throughout the years (including as an adult) but the second one I hadn't seen in full in many years. I figured it was time to watch both and talk about them here.

Technically, how I saw the first yesterday was that I watched the movie while listening to a podcast from a site where some people did a commentary track for the movie and while they spent a lot of time clowning on the movie and how there's so many coincidences and the villains take a superhuman amount of punishment... that said, they still say they love this piece of nostalgia from their childhood despite how it's easy to laugh at things as an adult.

Home Alone 2... yeah, it's pretty ridiculous how it's such a carbon copy of the first. Plus, talk about contrivances, I thought the first was silly but the sequel and how Kevin ended up in New York, preposterous. You could really tear apart this movie, even more so than the first one. Plus, I don't think it needed to be 2 hours even; it should have been around the same as the first one.

Now, Tim Curry as the hotel concierge was great as hey, it's Tim Curry, and his underling Rob Schneider was actually tolerable considering it's Rob Schneider. There were some real sappy moments but they were fine if you're into such things. The traps for The Wet Bandits... it tops the first for sure and it makes things even more cartoony in the amount of punishment they can take and they still can get up instead of getting maimed or even killed. Plus, Uncle Frank singing Cool Jerk in the shower, that was the first time I heard that tune, and Cool Jerk is pretty awesome.

Now, it was nice to see the second after all these years, but overall the first one is the best. At least the both are watchable as an adult, as least if you saw it as a kid first. The other sequels I've never even seen, but I've heard real bad things about the third and fourth and believe it or not just a few weeks ago a fifth one made its debut on ABC Family (with Malcolm McDowell and Ed Asner!) and I have a feeling that one is no good. 

I'll be back Monday night for an appropriate Christmas Eve review, even if it may be on the twisted side.