Pizza & A Movie 82: "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York"
"Here we are, Marv: New York City. The land of opportunity."
1992 • PG • 2hs • Watch trailer • Stream on Disney+ • Rent it
😱 Kevin! A Home Alone 1 & 2 Double Feature
You’re reading Pizza & A Movie—eating our way through rental classics and their backstories. Tonight we conclude a Home Alone double feature I’m calling Kevin! We’re grabbing dad’s bag of cash and credit cards and hopping a flight for Neeeeew York City. It’s a follow-up to last time’s Christmas classic Home Alone and can only be Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
Here’s the plot. Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin), the youngest of five kids, feels like the armpit of the family. Big bro Buzz (Devin Ratray) lit his ears up during a Christmas recital but Kevin took the heat when the choir came crashing down. His mom (Catherine O’Hara) won’t give air to Kevin’s grievances and his dad (John Heard) won’t even give him batteries. What’s a Kevin to do? Last year he ended up home alone (shoutout movie title), but this year a vacation all by himself sounds mighty fine.
The universe in her mysterious wisdom grants Kevin’s wish. Guy lands in NYC solo while his family’s sequestered in the less desirable regions of Florida. Kevin checks into the Plaza Hotel, bumping into Donald Trump (Donald Trump, who only agreed to let them film if they paid him the standard rate and he got to be in the movie) before meeting the domineering concierge (Tim Curry) and affable-but-vacant bellboy (Rob Schneider). Meanwhile, the Wet Bandits Kevin put away last time, Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern), are back in circulation—in the Big Apple. How long will Kevin’s high-rolling stay last before the Plaza figures out this minor’s unaccompanied? And what if Harry and Marv catch up to him? What are the odds an empty building with traps-making materials aplenty is just lying around?
The Greatest Sequel of All Time
Here’s what I think: Home Alone 2 is the greatest sequel of all time. I’ll explain.
But The Godfather Part II!, you say. The Dark Knight!, you say. Mama Mia: Here We Go Again!, you say. All irrefutable masterpieces civilization will treasure for as long as cinema lives, true. But those are continuations of the same story. They say, “What if The Godfather’s credits didn’t roll and it just kept playing? What comes next?” “What did the Batman do the next day?” “What if Mia had another mamma?” (I have not seen the Mama Mia movies but I assume that’s accurate.)
There are two kinds of sequels. The above are the classic “Part Two” approach. The ones where a normal person sits down to write, well, more. But sometimes they give a budget to a madman. An unhinged person who instead remakes their first movie just with more of everything. Home Alone 2 knows you’re watching a follow-up. But it’s not interested in telling you a follow-up story. Like Evil Dead 2, Home Alone 2 isn’t Home Alone part two, it’s Home Alone times two.
Supporting Evidence:
The Kevin is cuter. The innocent boy has become a weaponized cherub.
His vacation, more lavish. Upper middle class suburbs → Ritzy hotel.
His pizza, more free. Last time: covered with cash from Buzz. This time it’s a comped limo pizza.
His sage, more sage. The tight-lipped salt man was fine, but Kevin’s upgraded to a lilting Irish haunted bird lady.
His family, more screwed. First they were stuck in Paris. Now they’re stuck in a Florida motel.
Home Alone 2 has more of everything! You look sad. You’re thinking, “My childhood favorite is just a copy-paste cash-grab!” Pal, you couldn’t be more wrong. Let’s go deeper.
Story Times Two
Home Alone 2 may have perfected its predecessor but it’s also thought through everything. Remember how last time I said Home Alone doesn’t have a story? It’s just a series of really good bits that your brain turns into a story? Home Alone 2 doesn’t do that. There is a real story here, and you can tell screenwriter John Hughes thought about it for a while.
Why are the McCallisters going on vacation for Christmas again only a year later? The implied story is perfect: Last year the McCallister family blew it all on a bougie vacation to Paris that didn’t work out because they left Kevin. The whole fam had to book pricey last-minute transatlantic Christmas tickets back home. This time they want a Christmas vacation but all they can scrape together is a low-rent hotel in Florida. Ah Florida: The Paris of already-spent budgets.
Now for the hook. In contrast to Home Alone’s “I made my family disappear”, Lost in New York fulfills the lil’ blonde’s wish for a vacation all by himself. What kid hasn’t prayed for that? It’s a strong premise that also gives the movie an excuse to set itself in a metropolitan playground that was just exiting its grimy Robocop years. NYC is a lot more interesting than Chicago suburbs and helps Home Alone 2 seem like a new dish without really changing the recipe.
Double the story, double the focus. Or half the focus? Anyway, this story’s focus is split across an ensemble cast. We spend moments with malicious maven of the front desk, Tim Curry’s concierge Mr. Hector. And the Marv to his Harry, Rob Schneider’s bellman Cedric. These salty sots provide a steady supply of dramatic tension in the hotel. But out in the streets, the Wet Bandits are jailbroken and born again hard as the more malicious Sticky Bandits. They’ve got thieving and murdering on their minds. (Kids get it.) All of these players get moments and motivations, but the MVP is Curry. He’s a special effect all by himself.
Home Alone 2 is the best sequel of all time because it doubles everything about the original, doing each thing better the second time. A strong case, and that’s even before we take a trip to the mystical realm. Let’s talk Christmas trees.
Christmas Tree in 3 Acts
Christmas Tree,
My Christmas Tree,
Lit up like a star;
When I see my Christmas tree,
Can loved ones be far?
Christmas Tree,
I'm certain
Wherever I roam,
The glow from your branches
Will light my way home.
That’s the chorus to John Williams’s “Christmas Star”, which Kevin and his school choir sing like a hymn at the beginning. Buzz’s candle-ing of Kevin is the spilling the drinks across the counter of this movie. It tells us that Kevin’s family won’t listen to him, so he doesn’t listen to them, a classic youngest kid dynamic. The lastborn’s greatest fear is being ignored. It’s also the first of three key appearances by a Christmas tree.
We see the tree again when Kevin visits Duncan’s Toy Chest. A stealthy Mr. Duncan himself gives Kevin the two-part turtledove ornament from a tree in the store. Chekhov’s turtledoves play into he falling action later when Kevin gives one to the Bird Lady. This moment with the tree in the store locks us into the Christmas tree as a mystical totem for Kevin. He’s worshipped it in song, but now he receives moral guidance from it.
Christmas tree is there for the big reunion at Rockefeller Center. On this, its third appearance, it’s a beacon. Kevin found the biggest Christmas tree he could in a city with frankly thousands of trees on offer. Like a lighthouse, it draws this out-to-sea young man and his mother together again. How does Christmas tree do it? If you sing Christmas tree’s song, and take its wisdom, it grants your wish when you need it most, sussing out what lies in the dim recesses of the heart. Classic Christmas tree.
Makes sense! I also think of Christmas tree as a seasonal deity. You too, right? Thought so. Same page!
That Kevin loves Christmas trees isn’t news. His mom tells us early in the film that he’s sweet on those big green shrubs. And in the previous movies, he cut down a tree and decorated it himself. Kevin knows Christmas tree requires devotion and sacrifice.
Home Alone 2 at the Box Office
How’d this do in ’92? Mixed. On opening weekend right before Thanksgiving it raked in $31M, more than making its $28M budget back (not counting marketing costs). It went on to make an international total of $359M, which is—running the numbers—really good. But not as good as the original, which made $476M. You gotta remember though, the first entry stayed in theaters for months and months, becoming a you-gotta-see-this-thing phenomenon. When Home Alone 2 came around, you basically had already seen it.
That’s a point critics made. Hard. They called it a soulless retread. Also pointed out how rough the IRL cartoon violence is and how sentimental everything else could be. When I was a kid, I didn’t like Marv’s skeleton showing as he’s electrocuted. As a grownup, I squirm during the rooftop brick-throwing opening salvo. But at neither age did I find it more or less offensive than its predecessor. Reviewer Richard Schickel writing for Time called it “a twice-told fairytale”. He went on to say that “the details of the situations are developed vividly and originally. And they are presented with an energy and a conviction that sequels usually lack.” Sharp guy, that Schickel.
The years since 1992 have been kind to Lost in New York. Now we call both it and the original classics, acknowledging that the second is more fun to watch. It’s like watching a movie and it’s remake, but with all the same people involved and only two years between the projects. I can’t help but think that the original pitch was Die Hard in a kid’s house. Then the sequel got the budget to actually do Die Hard but with a kid in a metro multi-story.
It’s a Christmas miracle.
How to relive Home Alone 2 but in the silliest ways possible
So you want a trip down memory lane but are tired of watching the actual movie? Tricky, but I’ll be your guide through this cash-grabbing underworld.
Should you read the novelization? No no. Instead pick up the audiobook of the novelization as read by actual Tim Curry.
Perhaps a board game, you think? No no. Grab Home Alone 2 for Game Boy, which Electronic Gaming Monthly awarded Worst Movie-to-Game of ‘96.
Considering rewatching on VHS? No no. Reach instead for replaying dialogue from the VHS release as recorded from and played by Tiger’s Talkboy, made and sold for real as a movie tie-in. I owned one. Man did that thing chew through AAs.
Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed this traps-laden travel through Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. It’s streaming on Disney+, it’d be weird if you didn’t rewatch it. If you missed last time’s coverage of Home Alone, go back and read that one.
And hey, if you liked this one, share it with a pal who would too! Don’t leave ‘em wandering the streets alone.