For the fifth time, Home Alone‘s 30-year-old cheese pizza has been reheated.
The same straightforward timelessness of its story that made the 1990 original enduring Christmas classic has likewise created a staggered string of declining sequels that saw production values drop like bricks off a rooftop. (To be fair, the last effort in 2012 did spring for every kid’s favorite actor, Malcolm McDowell.) Like everything else since Home Alone 3 dropped continuity, the latest sequel-cum-reboot, Home Sweet Home Alone, is also not headed to theaters. Predictably, it’s isntead headed exclusively to Disney+.
But “made-for-TV” isn’t the same as “made-for-streaming” these days, so for what little it’s worth, this is probably the most auspicious outing since Macaulay Culkin got lost in New York.
Jojo Rabbit breakout Archie Yates stars among a host of comedy ringers that include Rob Delaney, Ellie Kemper, Pete Holmes, and SNL vets Kenan Thompson, Chris Parnell, and Mikey Day—who also co-wrote the script with fellow SNL writer Streeter Seidell.
Nonetheless, if you’ve seen one Home Alone, you’ve probably seen the only Home Alone you really need to bother with. From this trailer, it seems this iteration is just another, lesser, retreaded remix of the familiar. Buzz is back (now as a cop); the burglars are now literally a bickering married couple instead of just coming across as one; the family has flown off to Tokyo without their son this time, as if it matters where they are; and our abandoned child once again says, “This is my house. I have to defend it,” before getting to his crudely-drawn schematics and booby traps. In maybe the most inexplicably tweaked reference, Kevin McCallister’s repeated, “I made my family disappear…” is now, “They don’t even know I’m here…” Why not! No more or less arbitrary or clumsy than this one’s title being Home Sweet Home Alone.
It hits Disney+ November 12.
