Home alone 2 roger ebert

While a sequel typically strives to give audiences more of what they previously got with a little something extra, 's Home Alone 2: Lost in New York is quite literally the same film all over again.

He was the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. In the process, we place the people in our lives into compartments and define how they should behave to our advantage. Because we cannot force them to follow our desires, we deal with projections of them created in our minds. But they will be contrary and have wills of their own. Eventually new projections of us are dealing with new projections of them. Sometimes versions of ourselves disagree.

Home alone 2 roger ebert

I have a feeling that "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York" is going to be an enormous box office success, but include me out. I didn't much like the first film, and I don't much like this one, with its sadistic little hero who mercilessly hammers a couple of slow-learning crooks. Nor did I enjoy the shameless attempt to leaven the mayhem by including a preachy subplot about the Pigeon Lady of Central Park. Call me hardhearted, call me cynical, but please don't call me if they make " Home Alone 3. Some of the gags are lifted directly from old color cartoons, and in spirit what we're looking at here are Road Runner adventures, with the crooks playing the role of Wile E. As the two hapless mopes fall down ladders and get slammed by bricks and pound bags of cement, and covered with glue and paint and birdseed, you can hear the cackling of the old Looney Tunes heroes in the background. And just like in the cartoons, the crooks are never really hurt; they bounce back, dust themselves off, bend their bones back into shape and are ready for the next adventure. When little Kevin Macaulay Culkin taunts them "Hey! Up here! Most of the live-action attempts to duplicate animation have failed, because when flesh-and-blood figures hit the pavement, we can almost hear the bones crunch, and it isn't funny. Take, for example, the scene in "Home Alone 2" where Kevin lures the crooks into trying to crawl down a rope from the top of a four-story townhouse. He has soaked the rope in kerosene, and when they're halfway down, he sets it on fire. Ho, ho. Once again, Kevin's forgetful family leaves home without him he gets on the plane to New York instead of Miami , and once again they fret while he deals effortlessly with the world.

Hitting theaters just two years after its wildly popular predecessor, Home Alone 2 went on to some major box office success, but received mixed reviews. When his family arrives at the Miami airport and realize they're missing Kevin yet again, his mother makes the same panicked exclamation from the first film, home alone 2 roger ebert, albeit in an exaggerated manner. When little Kevin Macaulay Culkin taunts them "Hey!

Being left home alone, when you were a kid, meant hearing strange noises and being afraid to look in the basement - but it also meant doing all the things that grownups would tell you to stop doing, if they were there. Things like staying up to watch Johnny Carson, eating all the ice cream, and sleeping in your parents' bed. And they're the kinds of traps that any 8-year-old could devise, if he had a budget of tens of thousands of dollars and the assistance of a crew of movie special effects people. The movie's screenplay is by John Hughes , who sometimes shows a genius for remembering what it was like to be young. His best movies, such as " Sixteen Candles ," " The Breakfast Club ," " Ferris Bueller's Day Off " and " Planes, Trains and Automobiles ," find a way to be funny while still staying somewhere within the boundaries of remote plausibility. This time, he strays so far from his premise that the movie suffers.

While a sequel typically strives to give audiences more of what they previously got with a little something extra, 's Home Alone 2: Lost in New York is quite literally the same film all over again. Excluding a few key details, particularly the titular setting, Kevin McCallister's Macaulay Culkin second solo outing took the comedy franchise to exaggerated heights by dropping the precocious youngster smack dab in the middle of America's biggest city. High jinks and hilarity ensue with Kevin navigating his way through an intimidating world and yet again facing off against perhaps the most incompetent pair of burglars to ever hit the silver screen. Sound familiar? Hitting theaters just two years after its wildly popular predecessor, Home Alone 2 went on to some major box office success, but received mixed reviews.

Home alone 2 roger ebert

This movie follows the exact formula of the first two, but is funnier and gentler, has a real charmer for a hero, and provides splendid wish fulfillment and escapism for kids in, say, the lower grades. There is even a better rationale for why the hero is left home alone. Played by a winning newcomer named Alex D. Linz , who seems almost too small for a middle initial, the kid gets the chicken pox. His dad is out of town on business, his mom has an emergency at the office, and his brother and sister are at school. So he's left home alone, with a beeper number, a fax number, a cell phone number, the number of Mrs. Hess across the street and dialing as a fallback position. The subplot has already been set into motion. A spy ring has stolen a computer chip, and because of an exchange of identical bags at the San Francisco airport, the toy truck containing the chip has ended up at Mrs.

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This has not been a conventional review. Some of the gags are lifted directly from old color cartoons, and in spirit what we're looking at here are Road Runner adventures, with the crooks playing the role of Wile E. Ennio Nell Minow. A cinematic experiment in discovering the viewers' willingness to retread familiar ground and forgive blatantly repetitive tropes, the sequel revisits all the hallmarks of its predecessor and consistently ups the ante for entertainment's sake. In , he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. This gives our Home Alone sequel the perfect excuse to have its cake and eat it, too. For a child, already viewing the world as a scary and formidable place, what could be more intimidating than one of the largest cities in the world? There used to be movies where it was bad for little kids to hurt grown-ups. If audiences thought slipping on ice, getting stuck with a nail, or being hit with a paint can was painful, then surely the injuries sustained by these characters in Home Alone 2 are off the charts in their brutality. On the morning they're due to travel to Florida for the Christmas holidays and having slept through their alarm because of electronic negligence, the McCallister parents wake up startled and synchronously spout off one of Home Alone 2 's most emblematic remarks: "We did it again! Wikipedia has an article about: Roger Ebert. MacAulay Culkin as Kevin. Right off the bat, audiences are treated to a familiar set up.

Being left home alone, when you were a kid, meant hearing strange noises and being afraid to look in the basement - but it also meant doing all the things that grownups would tell you to stop doing, if they were there. Things like staying up to watch Johnny Carson, eating all the ice cream, and sleeping in your parents' bed.

Culkin is the little boy who co-starred with John Candy in " Uncle Buck ," and here he has to carry almost the whole movie. But in the contrived world of this movie, the only neighbor is an old coot who is rumored to be the Snow Shovel Murderer, and the phone doesn't work. As before, he seems to have a complete command of all handyman skills, including rigging ladders and wiring appliances for electrical shocks - and, of course, he finds all the props he needs, even for rigging the exploding toilet and setting that staple gun to fire through the keyhole. This film must not have seemed strange to them. Harry Joe Pesci and Marv Daniel Stern , arguably even more hapless than they were the first time around, endure a beating at Kevin's hands rivaling that of villainous characters in many action films. Now streaming on:. I didn't much like the first film, and I don't much like this one, with its sadistic little hero who mercilessly hammers a couple of slow-learning crooks. Joe Pesci as Harry. In , he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. I'm sure he got lots of help from director Chris Columbus , but he's got the stuff to begin with. MacAulay Culkin as Kevin. Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from until his death in A cinematic experiment in discovering the viewers' willingness to retread familiar ground and forgive blatantly repetitive tropes, the sequel revisits all the hallmarks of its predecessor and consistently ups the ante for entertainment's sake. Now streaming on:. Catherine O'Hara as Kate.