Home Alone Remake Review

Welcome back to the Tribe! In this post we will be going over our Home Alone Remake Review! Here are our thoughts about the film, and what you need to know before you see it!

Home Sweet Home Alone

Moviegoers don’t usually have the same opinion as critics. But it can happen when a masterpiece or a total failure hits the movie theaters.

Unfortunately, Dan Mazer‘s remake falls into the latter category. The script for the new film “Home Alone” wasn’t written by Mazer, but by little-known comedians Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell. That doesn’t excuse the mediocre directing by the two-time Oscar nominee for best screenplay.

You can start by saying that the movie is entirely unfunny, which is as terrible as it is for horror to have zero chills and thrills. It seemed like a good idea to invite Devin Ratray to play the supporting role of Buzz McAllister once again, but this time as a policeman, yet, the writers could not come up with a single funny line to his character or develop his arc at all. The scenes with Buzz will make you cringe at the very least, just like almost everything else in this movie.

Young Archie Yates is a good actor, but he’s just not suitable for the reincarnation of Kevin McAllister.

He is more like a cliché nerd from a generic family comedy, but that’s not the main problem. At the whim of the writers, Max became an obnoxious character that resembles a villain than a savvy victim of two incompetent house burglars. So here we are, a married couple with money problems trying to penetrate Max’s house to pick up their belongings, which the lousy young man might have stolen from them when he visited their house for sale.

Well, I wonder, how many viewers will empathize with Max Mercer?

Movie Issues

And this is the biggest problem of the movie: how should we evaluate the dramatic trick of the writers, who twisted the main antagonists of the franchise? The remake was stripped from the magic of the collision that the original had. What we are left with is simply a slapstick comedy with two uninvited visitors versus an inventive child and traumatizing pranks that take too long.

By the way, parents’ characters are poorly written too! The boy’s mother, who pops up often enough, completely blends with Max’s many relatives. The only highlight might be Ally Maki as Mei. At least she looks good and does not show herself as a complete idiot. I can barely remember at least one textured or layered character, nor can I point to a funny or a bizarre sketch of human behavior.

It doesn’t matter whether we see supporting characters or the main ones: viewers get bombarded with poorly written jokes. It’s as if the writers searched “Joke of the day” Twitter accounts for inspiration.

Remakes

It seems like all the movies are remakes or sequels these days. Everything is being reshot, remade, and repackaged. Almost all of these remakes distort the original meaning of the movie.

Fortunately, this remake does not have fans on both sides of the ocean. I guess a few doubted that Kevin McAllister’s story would not fall a victim to a modern remake machine. And it is not entirely clear who needs this movie, an audience full of nostalgia for Christmas classics or the new generation? In the end, Generation Z should also have its own inventive defender of the house that uses only natural ingenuity and the capabilities of modern gadgets.

Film Rating

In the end, I would give this remake 1 star out of 4 stars!

I cannot help myself but imagine Dan Mazer meeting the same disgusting character, in which he turned naughty, yet good-hearted Kevin McAlister to experience all of these exceptionally funny jokes and pranks by alarmingly low standards of the director.