I HAVE REVIEWED OVER 400 (C H R I S T M A S ) MOVIES AND SPECIALS.BEWARE OF SOME REVIEWERS THAT ONLY HAVE ONLY ONE REVIEW. WHEN ITS A POSITIVE THERE IS A GOOD CHANCE THEY WERE INVOLVED WITH THE PRODUCTION. NOW I HAVE NO AGENDA! I AM HONEST! I REVIEW MOVIES & SPECIALS AS A WAY TO KEEP TRACK OF WHAT I HAVE SEEN! I HAVE DISCOVERED MANY GEMS IN MY QUEST TO SEE AS MANY Christmas MOVIES AS I CAN. After the Original "Home Alone" became the 3rd highest grossing film of all time it was just a given that there would be a sequel and 2 years after the release of "Home Alone" 2oth Century Fox Released "Home Alone 2" and it was also known as "Home Alone 2: Christmas in the Park"After snarky youth Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) loses track of his father at the airport, he mistakenly gets on a plane headed for New York City -- while the rest of the McCallisters fly to Florida. Now alone in the Big Apple, Kevin cons his way into a room at the Plaza Hotel and begins his usual antics. But when Kevin discovers that the Sticky Bandits (Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern) are on the loose, he struggles to stop them from robbing an elderly man's toy store just before Christmas.None of the charm that made the original so much fun is even present here. This is a sub-par sequel that had no heart and no soul. It was a money grab. Overtime the film has fallen out of public's eye. You will see the original again & again but this sequel is not worth a repeat viewing.

Yes, it's a carbon copy of the original. But some people watch the original over and over again anyway. So they might as well make another adventure in the exact same vein. So every beat they hit is the exact same. Vacation time at Christmas. Kevin is left by himself. He is scared, sure, but soon accepts his fate and enjoys everything to the fullest. The two crooks threaten the kid, but then he proves how stupid the bad guys are by setting intricate traps for them, and they fall into each one. Harry and Marvin go to jail. Mom reunites with her son. The old weirdo that befriended Kevin earlier smiles at the end.Boom boom boom. Every box checked. I don't really care for either movie but I see them all the time on TV and it's hard to resist such brain candy. Damn thing still chokes me up but I don't understand why. Sappy music. Christmas themes. Culkin's acting. It should add up to nothing. Bah, humbug. Merry Christmas. All that malarkey.

'Home Alone' bust box office figures when it first appeared in 1990, spawning a video game spin-offs and making a celebrity of its star, Macaulay Culkin. A sequel then was a racing certainty. Two years later, it appeared, under the title 'Home Alone 2 - Lost In New York'.A year has passed ( in the context of the film at least ) since Kevin's hair raising being left at home alone experience. On the night before a Christmas vacation to Florida, Kevin is in trouble yet again after getting into another brawl with his older brother Buzz. After being reprimanded by his mother, Kevin wishes aloud that he was able to go on his own vacation without his family. The following morning, the family ( surprise surprise ) sleep through their alarm again ( as Peter, Kevin's dad, absent mindedly unplugged it the night before ), causing them to leave for the airport in a tearing hurry. Unfortunately, whilst Kevin manages to make it to the airport with his family, he ends up getting lost in the crowd and ends up accidentally boarding a flight to New York whilst his family are flying to Florida.Kevin's initial shock is turned to joy when he realises he is left alone to have his own vacation and so checks himself into The Plaza Hotel using his father's credit card ( which he has as he was holding his dad's bag at the airport when he got lost ). Kevin eventually flees from the hotel when he is confronted by the staff about the card, whereupon he runs into Harry and Marv, who have recently bust out of jail and have renamed themselves 'The Sticky Bandits' instead of 'The Wet Bandits'. The try to exact revenge on Kevin and follow him when he seeks refuge in the house of one of his relatives, which is under renovation. The goons yet again ( well, you knew it was coming, didn't you? ) fall foul to Kevin's various booby traps that he has hastily set around the house. The two eventually get arrested after their location was made known by 'the pigeon lady', a homeless old lady who tends to the pigeons in the park and ( like Old Man Marley from the first film ) who Kevin was at first afraid of but later befriended.Eventually, Kevin is reunited happily with his family when they arrive in New York after the police managed to track Kevin down.'Home Alone 2 - Lost In New York' is in some ways better than it predecessor, partly due to the wonderful location shooting in New York and mainly due to the toning up of Harry and Marv's suffering at the hands of Kevin. At one point, Marv is electrocuted, has a bag of cement dumped on his head, is struck in the face repeatedly with bricks and shot in the groin with a nail gun whilst Harry yet again has his head torched with a blow lamp, is crushed against a wall by a tool chest and thrown into the air and on top of a parked car. Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern are as hilarious as ever as Harry and Marv but it is again Culkin who shines throughout. John Hughes' script yet again is full of many wonderful one liners, particularly when Harry and Marv arrive in New York after sneaking to the back of a fish lorry, which leads to a hilarious debate between Harry and Marv about the difference between the smell of freedom and fish ( I won't even attempt to do it justice here ). Like the first, a computer game version of this film was released the same year for both the Sega and Nintendo systems.Catherine O'Hara, John Heard, Devin Ratray, Kieran Culkin and Gerry Bamman all reprise their roles as Kevin's family whilst appearing in the supporting cast are Tim Curry, Dana Ivey, Rob Schneider, Brenda Fricker and Eddie Bracken. Donald Trump ( yuck ) makes a surprise cameo appearance in the first scene shot in the plaza hotel.Plans for a third 'Home Alone' film came to fruition in the late '90's which was initially to have Culkin reprise his role, this time as a teenage Kevin McAllister. However, Culkin passed on the role and it went instead to Alex D. Linz who played Alex Pruddit. 'Home Alone 3' was not surprisingly as well received as the first two but was successful nonetheless, which is more that could be said for 'Home Alone 4' ( which had Mark Weinberg as Kevin McAllister and appeared in 2003 ). Audiences groaned! The 2012 television film 'Home Alone - The Holiday Heist' was no better.A great Christmas romp to be enjoyed by the family over and over again!Funniest moment - the aforementioned 'freedom' and 'fish' moment!

I've always loved the first HOME ALONE film, ever since I was a kid, but I deliberately put off seeing this sequel after reading the negative reviews back in the day. Watching it now, as an adult, I can see what the reviewers meant: this is an insult, or indeed a kick in the teeth, to anyone who loves the first film.Given that the original movie was a smash hit, it was inevitably that a rushed-out sequel would quickly follow. And rushed out is right; this is a mere remake of the first film, albeit with a different setting (and nobody gets "lost" either, despite the title). The characters are all exactly the same, the gags are the same, everything's the same. A bigger budget doesn't mean improved quality; it means that everyone was in this to grab more dollars.It feels exactly like director Chris Columbus and writer John Hughes are going through the motions here. The bumbling villains are back and have even more ridiculous motives than previously. The crazy pigeon lady replaces the crazy old guy. Even the same TV gag is played out again. Hell, even the climax takes place in a house again, so the whole New York setting turns out to be a cheat. The whole sub-plot with the stressed out parents really drags things down a lot too.HOME ALONE 2: LOST IN NEW YORK isn't a total loss as a film, even though it's a crushing disappointment. It's hard to dislike Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern, two actors giving such physical performances. Tim Curry is a fun addition to the cast too. But Macaulay Culkin's self-knowing, superior attitude is becoming annoying already (and, indeed, his Hollywood star was to quickly wane after this) and there's absolutely nothing here that hasn't been done better previously. It's a real disappointment.