Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House (2002)
Director: Rod Daniel
Stars: Michael Weinberg, French Stewart, Missi Pyle
Well, the Christmas season has arrived upon us once again, and Awfully Good Movies is ringing in the Yuletide with one of its two Christmas specials this year… HOME ALONE 4: TAKING BACK THE HOUSE! Yes, few of you may know that the HOME ALONE franchise kept going after the Culkin-less third installment flopped in theaters in 1997. But now this series has transferred onto the small screen in a TV movie made for The Wonderful World of Disney, and the results are, much like Buzz’s girlfriend…WOOF! Sure, Part 4 may have brought back Peter McAllister after they kicked him to the curb for that last movie, but Macaulay Culkin is now old enough to drink, drive AND become the lead singer of a pizza-themed Velvet Underground cover band, so he’s now played by some little hobbit-looking brat who doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. And though they tried bringing Daniel Stern back in as Marv, even the guy who starred in BUSHWHACKED thought this movie would be below him, so we’ve got the squinty eyed guy from 3rd ROCK FROM THE SUN now. Well, at least there’s still plenty of cartoonish slapstick in this fourth movie…as written by two people who are not John Hughes and directed by a man who isn't Chris Columbus. Also, the movie is shot in South Africa, and the crew spent all of the budget for the fake snow by gambling on cockfights. So without anything that helped those first two HOME ALONEs become Christmas classics, what do you have left? PAIN…83 minutes of cinematic pain. Trust me, the only Wet Bandits to be found in this movie are the filthy animals who made money off of this turd.
And if you guys want more Awfully Good Christmas cheer, then check out my guest appearance on the Castmas Podcast, where my fellow critics A.J. Hakari and Chris Luedtke review Christmas movies and specials all year round! On this episode, I stop by and help them make sense of the direct-to-video Where's Waldo Christmas special The Merry X-Mas Mix-Up! Please do enjoy.
Guys, I'm eating junk and watching old episodes of Awfully Good Movies on YouTube! You better come out and stop me…