Chris Columbus
Mamma ho riperso l'aereo

The issue here is generational. I mean, if you're 40 like yours truly, it's one thing, if you're "beyond," you'll find the reviewed work a total nonsense. In the end, it is, but I was 8 years old when it came out, and I think I fell in love with New York (and Christmas in New York) precisely thanks to, or because of, this film. In order.

"Home Alone" (1990), produced by John Hughes (who saw it not short, but very long), was a wildly successful outlier. In the end, it was a silly little story whose screenplay was written on a napkin and almost forcefully included basic cartoon gags. The early nineties audience, still immersed in the previous decade, loved it, and the generation raised on video games and television found the film of their lives, thanks also to the protagonist, the extremely annoying Macaulay Culkin, who fell from grace quite swiftly (serves him right!). It must be said, and it's not a small detail, that in the same year Joe Pesci came out with this film and also with Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas," winning his only Oscar to date. A versatile actor.

Given its phenomenal success, the sequel was released two years later. The second of five, at least formally, because in the subsequent ones, the entire original cast disappears, and things change significantly ("Home Alone 3," 1997, not too bad; "Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House," 2002, a wreck; "Home Alone: The Holiday Heist," 2012; "Home Sweet Home Alone," 2021, never seen). The anticipation is palpable, but not because it is something special, but simply because if the first made a ton of money, imagine the second. Which in our country, in terms of earnings, did even better. It was released at Christmas, and the promotion was pervasive: even the Italian poster was modified to feature the logo of "TV Sorrisi e Canzoni," and the film was advertised everywhere, even in Burghy (how old we are, for the young ones, they were the McDonald's of the time).

McCallister, known as Kevin, gets lost in New York, even though he was supposed to go to Florida with his family. He spends and squanders his father's credit card, ends up at the Plaza, then meets a woman living with pigeons in Central Park and reunites with the two idiotic thieves from the first film. The napkin, by this point, is too much. The screenplay is extremely light, and the gags are the same, as in the first film the two idiotic thieves are subjected to so many beatings and smacks that the citational game based on the Tom and Jerry cartoons becomes blatantly obvious, which in turn paid homage to Laurel and Hardy, essentially getting beaten up a lot and never getting hurt. The protagonist is always annoying, with his gestures and faces, winks, and raised eyebrows, after all, that's what he was asked to do. If it were just this, the film is stretched by about twenty minutes, and some moments are really boring (the dialogue between Culkin and Brenda Fricker at the Opera House lasts a good ten minutes and becomes quite tedious after a while).

The director, Chris Columbus (who will be the master of ceremonies for the first two Harry Potter films), let's say this, is no fool, and he knows how to highlight some things. We mentioned New York and Christmas. As a child, I was thrilled, as an adult less so, but the American city is told with a fairy-tale eye that leaves a mark. Now, in 1992 even fools knew New York, we're not in the '20s at the time of "The Crowd" (1928), when King Vidor celebrated its futuristic beauty for those many who had never seen it and never would. Columbus knows that New York is everything, but it's not new, yet he tells it through aerial shots and with pastel photography that make Christmas in New York something fabulous (see also the toy store) and terrifying at the same time (Central Park is genuinely scary). He nails, surprisingly, the direction of the actors and gives Tim Curry (the Plaza concierge) an ironic, funny, foolish, Grinch-like character (see the overexposure with the green Grinch grin) that lift the film and make it surprisingly fun. And Tim Curry was IT two years earlier.

Let's just tell the whole story. To me, it is endlessly charming to see it again every time, sure times have changed, back then I wondered why I didn't see skyscrapers like in New York when I left the house, then they built them in Milan too, and the magic totally vanished. I know, it is what it is, despite its faults, I enjoy seeing it from time to time, also because it exudes the nineties from every pore, and as a good nostalgic passerby, I revel in it beautifully.

Then, perhaps, they're right.

Roger Ebert: "Cartoon violence is only funny in cartoons. Most attempts to duplicate animation in live-action have failed, because when flesh-and-blood figures hit the floor, we can almost hear the bones crunching, and it's not funny".

Dave Kehr (Chicago Tribune): "It plays like a crass, self-parodying version of the original, where the fantasy elements have become dirtier and more materialistic, the sentimentality more syrupy and aggressive, and the slapstick violence, already so intense in the first film, even more graphic and sadistic."

There's also Trump, just for five seconds, but it's an old story.