My Review of Home Alone: The Holiday Heist (2012)

 

Written by Aaron Ginsburg And Wade McIntyre

Directed by Peter Hewitt

Hughes: "I don't want to upset some ghost gangster."

Sinclair: "Look, we're going in, ghost or no ghost!"

Keeping with the non theatrical releases of this franchise with diminishing returns, this fifth installment might be better than the fourth's misguoded attempts to have it's cake and eat it, but it's still marred with it's own problems going forward.

On the plus side, there's no attempt to recast/reboot the McCallisters and instead it's a new family (like the third installment) that get the focus. Yup, due to work, the Baxter family swap California for Maine much to the disdain of children Alexis (Jodelle Ferland) and Finn (Christian Martin).

These kids really don't like living in a small town or to be away from their gadgets for too long and because of this, their exasperated parents Curtis (Doug Murray) and Catherine (Ellie Harvie) leave them home alone to their own devises. 

From here on in, the usual hijinks ensue with Finn acting up and Alexis wanting to sneak out to the mall. Oh and a bunch of art thieves looking to break into the Baxters home so they could obtain a very valuable painting, which forced the siblings and a snow obsessed kid named Mason (Peter DaCunha) to stop said thieves as well as a distant gamer named Simon (Bill Turnbill).

The thieves in question being led by Sinclair (Malcolm McDowell) and his accomplices Jessica (Debi Mazar) and Hughes (Eddie Steeples). They're an okay bunch of characters but their story takes a bit too long to get going and their defeat was a bit too quickly done with.

Overall some lessons were learned, gifts and rewards were received and being a thief in this franchise continues to result in excruciating pain inflicted upon by children as well as a jail sentence. Overall, that's it really.

- Originally this was going to be called Home Alone 5: Alone In The Dark.

- There's no references to the McCallisters at all, making this relatively unconnected to the original two movies.

- Standout music: Deck The Halls was used here.

- Chronology: 2012 Maine making this the first movie not to be set in Chicago for this franchise.

Home Alone: The Holiday Heist isn't a great movie by any stretch of the imagination but it's harmless enough. Better than the fourth but below the first three movies. It's inoffensive but far from a must see either.

Rating: 6 out of 10