25 Days of Christmas: 151 Proof Movies: Home Alone 2
What is there to say about Home Alone? It is a dark, family-comedy. I mean just think about the premise for a second. A family forgets their child at home (and lose him at an airport in the sequel) who gets harassed by some burglars, but who turns it around and picks them off. Now here’s the really messed up thing, I guess, is that the kid is a psycho. I mean think about all the elaborate death traps he comes up with in a few moments, and then executes them so flawlessly. When you think about some of the things Marv and Harry go through, they are lucky to be alive and Kevin is lucky he isn’t in prison or some mental ward.
That said, Home Alone and its sequel, Lost in New York, are perhaps two of my all-time favorite Christmas movies. The franchise (at least these two, we won’t mention 3 and 4) has been a part of my life for about 20 years or so. It was only fitting that it would be the first movie to be tested under our 151 Proof Movies Holiday Classics rule.
Since I was watching this with a friend on the other side of the country, we picked the Home Alone that was available on instant-stream, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, which as an added bonus takes place in my fair home town.
The movie pretty much apes the original’s formula, pretty hard. I mean you get the opening at the family’s home in Chicago, some hectic packing, some incident with Kevin which turns the family against him, some disaster with the wake-up calls, a haste to get out there on time, etc,etc
The major difference is that Kevin makes it to the airport with his family this time, but due to some confusion (and really lax airport security), Kevin ends up on a plane to New York City while his family goes to Florida.
Kevin runs into his old friends.
I won’t bore you with plot details of Home Alone 1/2, if you haven’t seen the movies by now, they probably won’t do anything for you.
However, the rules we set-up didn’t quite work too well with this movie. It is a Christmas movie, but it isn’t a Christmas-y movie. I mean at its cores, about a boy protecting his turf from some crooks so we don’t get many of the Christmas cliches that litter other movies. Most of the drinking early on came from the movie’s liberal use of Christmas music, I believe there are 7 times throughout the course of the movie when you drink due to Christmas music. Its fairly light on the snow (it doesn’t serve the plot really), there are two incidents when someone slips on ice so there’s that. No tree trimming moments in this movie (helps that it starts on like Dec 22nd so most people have their trees up and the likes)
We made some judgment calls, which is honestly the point of testing out these rules, and added in a rule to drink whenever Marv/Harry got injured by Kevin, drink twice if it effected the region below the belt and we will add an ugly sweater rule, I mean they were EVERYWHERE.
With the addition of the new rules (especially when Marv and Harry get injured), the movie helps you get a slight buzz going. No where near the level of the Street Fighter game, we shall make some amendments and repost the rules.
