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Why Home Alone Couldn't Survive Without Macaulay Culkin
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Jul 11, 2025
Home Alone and it's sequel Lost in New York are widely considered two of the best holiday movies ever made. There is a certain charm around Macaulay Culkin's portrayal of Kevin Mccallister and audiences instantly connected with it. Though as time went on, studios attempted to capitalize on the popularity of the Home Alone brand, but it failed spectacularly. Home Alone without Kevin Mccallister just isn't Home Alone.
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This is Home Alone, and it is an absolute holiday classic
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This is Home Alone 2, Lost in New York, and it's slightly less of a holiday classic
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And then there's Home Alone 3, 4, The Holiday Heist, and Home Sweet Home Alone, and they
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might as well not even exist. So what happened here? How did this once box office juggernaut fall off a cliff and into this abysmal run of totally
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forgettable, straight-to-video releases that missed the mark by nearly every metric? This is my house. I have to defend it
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The first Home Alone film was a critical and commercial success. The film had a unique and
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original premise that effectively took the excitement of a big-budget action film and
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distilled it into a family-friendly comedy about a child protecting his home from two burglars
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Home Alone is a great movie. It seamlessly blends humor and heartwarming emotions together with low-budget action set
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pieces, all while telling an endearing story about the importance of family and home that
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is accessible to pretty much any viewer of any age. This translated to Home Alone generating $476.7 million at the box office
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If you adjust that number for inflation, it'd be the same as grossing over $1 billion by
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today's box office standards. These are not numbers that get ignored. So, of course, a sequel was greenlit almost immediately
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Keep the change, you filthy animal. Home Alone 2 Lost in New York was released in 1992
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and, once again, audiences lined up for another holiday adventure in hopes of it capturing the same magic as the original film
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Where's Kevin? 14. It's a good thing I have my own ticket, just in case you guys try to ditch me
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For the most part, Home Alone 2 does a pretty decent job of holding up next to its predecessor
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Some might argue that Home Alone 2 is a bit of an unrealistic retread of the original film but thanks to Macaulay Culkin magnetically likable personality and uncanny comedic timing he able to carry this film to similar heights of success Merry Christmas you filthy animal
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And a happy new year. Sure, the film relies a bit too heavily on recycling old bits to varying degrees of success
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but it seems to follow the model of, if it isn't broken, there's no need to fix it
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Where the first film spends the inaugural 20 minutes setting up family dynamics
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defining relationships, and cementing thematic elements, Home Alone 2 sets up plot devices and
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gimmicks, while serving up second beats of jokes we have already seen and heightening characters we
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already know. Home Alone 2 sidesteps too many necessary components to make it a great film
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The McAllisters learned nothing from forgetting their child in the first film and lose them again
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in an airport. Kevin learns nothing about the appropriate thing for a minor to do when separated
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from his family, and Harry and Marv learned nothing about Kevin McAllister's superhuman
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understanding of applied physics. Since nobody has learned anything, we aren't necessarily as
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invested as we need to be as the film's story plays out. Despite all of its flaws, Home Alone 2
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Lost in New York was another home run at the box office and was able to generate a sizable return
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of about $358 million in 1992. So, of course, the studios went right back to work on Home Alone 3
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You guys give up or you're thirsty for more? Macaulay Culkin wasn't returning for a third foray into the world of makeshift home security
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systems, and the studio had to seek out a child performer who could effectively fill
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Macaulay Culkin's shoes. Something that just isn't possible. What John McClane is to Die Hard, Kevin McAllister is to Home Alone, and not having him involved
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in a Home Alone film doesn't make sense. Look what you did, you little jerk
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Home Alone 3 is a standalone film, and it's wholly unrelated to the first two films
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There isn't even a nod to them. It just an entirely new film that uses the same formula but it fails on almost every front It seems like the intent behind making it was just to get to the hijinks as fast as possible without laying any of the necessary groundwork to tell us why we should care The plot
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just focuses primarily on injuring four criminals who are about as threatening as a bowl of cereal
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in wild and outlandish ways. There's no heart, there's no charm, and there's certainly no
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Macaulay Culkin. Alex D. Linz is a cute kid, but it really starts and stops there. It's not that
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he's necessarily a bad performer, he just doesn't have that gravitational charm that's present in
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Macaulay Culkin's performance. Home Alone 4 struggled with almost the exact same problems as Home Alone 3
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but it adds insult to injury by attempting to effectively reboot the franchise. This film never
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even hit theaters. It was released as a made-for-TV movie, and it feels lackluster, even by those
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standards. The plot is a convoluted mess. Kevin's family is going through a divorce. His dad has a
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new girlfriend who is rich. Marv is the primary antagonist, but they recast him with French
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Stewart. And it was an even bigger mistake to think that another performer could have stepped
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into the role of Kevin McAllister. There's none of that sly, impish wit that we all came to love
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from Macaulay Culkin's performance. I was making ornaments out of fish hooks. My new fish hooks
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I can make ornaments out of the old ones with dry worm guts stuck on them
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You would think that after two colossal failures that Home Alone would finally rest in peace
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But in 2012, Disney tried to breathe new life into the franchise with Home Alone
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The Holiday Heist, another made-for-TV movie, and not even the somewhat startling inclusion of a classically trained actor like Malcolm McDowell
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could save it. We're not a bunch of two-bit bandits. We're not going to be stymied by a slippery walkway
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Again, this film runs into the same problem. It tries to take a cute kid, criminals, and pranks
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and make a movie without doing any labor whatsoever in telling us why we should care
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The most recent attempt to revive Home Alone came last year with Home Sweet Home Alone releasing as a Disney Plus original film This film ignores the latter three films in the series and instead serves as a sequel to the original films This is evidently supported by the inclusion of Buzz
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McAllister, who has gone on to become a police officer, and several homes in the area are
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protected by McAllister home security. So the film, at the very least, extends within the same world
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When I was a kid, my family went on vacation. We forgot my little brother, Kevin
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twice. Home Sweet Home Alone is better than the latter three installments
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but that isn't saying much. The villains are an improvement. Ellie Kemper and Rob Delaney bring some established comedic chops into play
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and Archie Yates is an incredibly endearing performer who comes into the franchise after a breakout performance
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in Taika Waititi's Jojo Rabbit. In this film, the narrative gets flipped on its head
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Instead of burglars coming in to steal from a family, it's actually the protagonist who steals from the burglars
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They're trying to retrieve their stolen property. While there are definitely some fun moments in the film
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it plays out more like a highlight reel rather than a cohesive film. But the structure is there
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Home Alone was built upon the foundation of thematic elements of togetherness
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individuality, and what it means to be part of a family. And instead of embracing those themes
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the franchise centered on the elaborate hijinks in comedy to grab the viewer's attention
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No offense, that seems like sort of a dumb thing to do
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This is fine if you are a six-year-old, but it doesn't create a viewing experience
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that everyone can necessarily enjoy. There's nothing for us to latch onto emotionally
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and thus we have no reason to actually care. And without a charismatic performer like Macaulay Culkin
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in the driver's seat of a primary protagonist, these lackluster scripts never deliver enough charm
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to keep an ever-evolving movie-going audience engaged. Without a true sequel featuring an adult Kevin McAllister played by Macaulay Culkin
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the franchise will continue to run into the same problems hand over fist
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