How Home Alone 2 Became More Beloved Than The Original Movie

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York has grown significantly more beloved since its 1992 debut, arguably becoming the most definitive Home Alone movie, and there are a few reasons why. As the follow-up to the massive 1990 holiday season hit that was the Macaulay Culkin-led Home Alone, Home Alone 2 had a major challenge in matching the success of its predecessor. While still quite a sizeable hit with its $359 million final gross, it fell short of the original’s $476 million, and wasn’t as well-received, with much criticism focused on it being too close to the basic plot of the first Home Alone.

While the subsequent Home Alone sequels have also had lukewarm or negative responses, Home Alone 2‘s reputation has noticeably grown more positive. Since its debut, Home Alone 2 has even become as much of a holiday season staple movie as the original. Additionally, Home Alone 2 also changed the formula of the series up for the better.

To be clear, Home Alone 2 held onto much of what made the first Home Alone so popular, including the holiday season setting, Culkin’s young protagonist Kevin McCallister, and Kevin’s house of deadly traps for his old enemies, Harry and Marv (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern). At the same time, Home Alone 2 gave Kevin a chance to genuinely grow, and the movie expanded its story in ways that made him a stronger and even more heroic protagonist than in the original. Here’s how Home Alone 2 bucked the odds to successfully build on the original Home Alone and become a holiday season fixture.

Kevin Has More Of A Challenge, & Adventure, In Home Alone 2

While Kevin was put to the test in the first Home Alone movie in a way that kids seldom are (and never should be), his experience in Home Alone 2 shows how resourceful and resilient Kevin is even at ten years old when he finds himself on his own in the Big Apple. Kevin knows how to navigate the massive metropolis, and also has the foresight to look in his father’s address book to find his Uncle Rob’s address. Furthermore, Kevin getting on the wrong plane and ending up in New York takes him on more of an adventure than the first film did.

In Home Alone, though Kevin had to adapt to finding himself on his own, he was still in a relatively secure situation in the very affluent suburb the McCallister’s huge house is situated in. Home Alone 2 not only has him cross paths with the renamed Sticky Bandits again, but this now happens in a completely foreign environment like New York. Still, Kevin also gets to have a lot of fun having his own vacation in New York’s Plaza Hotel (the now controversial Donald Trump cameo aside). That being said, charging everything to his father’s credit card, including a $967 room service bill, is something that Kevin surely only skates by on due to his young age and being part of the McCallister family.

Kevin’s Poor Treatment By His Family Is Brought More Into Focus

Something that the first Home Alone showed was how dysfunctional the huge McCallister family was, with Kevin constantly bullied by his cousins and siblings, and the adults of the household largely indifferent or even complicit in his mistreatment, particularly his Uncle Frank (Gerry Bamman). Though Kevin wasn’t blameless in the conflicts of the night before, he’d also been pushed to his breaking point by the other McCallister kids and especially by his older brother Buzz (Devin Ratray), with the adults, including his mother Kate McCallister (Catherine O’Hara), mostly looking the other way. While Kevin and his family seemed to reconcile by the end of the first Home Alone, Home Alone 2 shows that Kevin’s treatment in the McCallister household is, if anything, worse than it was in the first film.

After Buzz humiliates Kevin during a school pageant, he gets a mere slap on the wrist in just having to give a clearly insincere apology. Peter McCallister (John Heard) more or less threatens the angry Kevin with having to share a bed with his bed-wetting prone cousin Fuller (Kieran Culkin), and Frank, who laughed hysterically through Buzz’s prank, simply grumbles to Kevin about not wreaking the trip to Florida. Within hours, the McCallisters go on to lose Kevin for the second year in a row, the realization again coming to Kate suddenly. Even more so than its predecessor, Home Alone 2 is quite the indictment of the parenting skills of the McCallisters, and has a lot more sympathy for Kevin.

Kevin’s Traps Have A More Realistic Basis

Kevin’s final confrontation with the Sticky Bandits in the home of his Uncle Rob and Aunt Georgette is another house of traps like the original Home Alone, but Home Alone 2 augments the series’ third act tradition in several ways. To begin with, Kevin’s ingenuity is even more highlighted now that he’s adapting a house that isn’t his own to spring traps on Harry and Marv. Moreover, the fact that the house is under renovation adds a little more believability to the torture devices Kevin is able to outfit it with.

While Kevin’s traps in the first Home Alone were fairly basic and easy to set into place, they’re elevated considerably in Home Alone 2 with traps like a missing floor, a toilet bowl full of kerosene, and many others. The fact that the house is being renovated makes it more plausible that Kevin could set up traps of such a nature, and have them function without wrecking the house badly or having to clean it up. As a sequel that expanded the scale of its predecessor, Home Alone 2 made sure that Kevin had a house where he could plausibly upgrade his traps for the story, leaving the fact that Harry and Marv survive any of them as the main area where suspension of disbelief is required.

Kevin Acts More Selflessly In Home Alone 2

Kevin McCallister is far from a perfect person, but both of the Chris Columbus-directed movies showed that he still clearly has a good heart, something he displayed in encouraging the neighborhood snow-shoveler Marley (Roberts Blosssom) to reconnect with his estranged son for the holidays. For Home Alone 2, Kevin’s entire motivation to stop the Sticky Bandits’ robbery of Duncan’s Toy Chest is to save the children’s hospital charity drive of Mr. Duncan (Eddie Bracken). Not even having a proper roof over his head after fleeing the Plaza Hotel, Kevin simply reasons that “You can mess with a lot of things, but you can’t mess with kids on Christmas.“

Kevin’s connection with the Pigeon Lady (Brenda Fricker) also echoes his relationship with Marley, but the homeless woman is in a much worse place, her whole life having fallen apart after her husband left her. Though Kevin is initially frightened of her, he provides her some needed companionship on Christmas Eve, and the following morning in New York City’s Central Park when he gifts her one of the turtle doves from Mr. Duncan, signifying them as life-long friends. For someone with no family or friends to share the holiday season with, Kevin’s seemingly small gesture of kindness is just the gift the Pigeon Lady needed.

Home Alone 2 never had the benefit of being of the kind of surprise hit to take the world by storm that the original Home Alone enjoyed. That context shows why it’s not altogether surprising that it failed to match the latter’s acclaim in its theatrical release. Still, the eventual path to Home Alone 2 getting the love it’s achieved was in how the film deepens Kevin’s story, showing the full extent of his cleverness and that, when the time calls for it, he’ll swiftly put his own needs aside for others.

About The Author

Brad Curran
(715 Articles Published)

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Growing up, Brad developed an innate love of movies and storytelling, and was instantly enamored with the world of adventure while following the exploits of Indiana Jones, Japanese kaiju, and superheroes. Today, Brad channels his thoughts on all manner of movies, from comic book films, sci-fi thrillers, comedies, and everything in between through his writings on Screen Rant. Brad also offers philosophical musings on martial arts and the filmographies of everyone from Jackie Chan to Donnie Yen on Kung Fu Kingdom, where he’s also had the privilege of interviewing many of the world’s great stunt professionals, and hearing plenty of gripping stories on injuries incurred in their line of work and the intricacies of designing the acts of death defiance he first thrilled to as a youngster. When he’s not writing, Brad enjoys going on a ride with the latest action hit or Netflix original, though he’s also known to just pop in “The Room” from time to time. Follow Brad on Twitter @BradCurran.

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