If you can believe it, recently-released Disney Plus exclusive Home Sweet Home Alone marks the sixth installment in the franchise, even though it’s been three decades since we last saw Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin McCallister left to fend for himself.
Home Alone 3, Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House, Home Alone: The Holiday Heist and Home Sweet Home Alone have all arrived between 1997 and this year, offering very little to recommend other than inoffensive fluff designed to keep family audiences occupied for two hours or less during the festive season.
Not to make anyone feel old, but yesterday marked the 29th anniversary of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York landing in theaters, and veteran fans of the series have been singing the movie’s praises, while largely refusing to acknowledge that there were any more reboots to follow after that.
Are people going to be revisiting Home Sweet Home Alone 30 years from now? Probably not, but the first two installments have endured as perennial Christmastime favorites, ones that still hold up as fun-filled slapstick adventures folks will happily fire up on DVD, Blu-ray or streaming every single year without fail. Whether you agree that Home Alone ceased to exist after 1992 is entirely up to you, but you definitely won’t be in the minority.