The Last Movie You Watched

[Rev. Rye]

This week in the Deep Hurting Project, Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House. It's been donkeys since I've seen the original movies.

• I love that they credited "Kevin" in quotation marks. It's like they're pre-emptively admitting that that Mike Weinberg looks nothing like Maculay Culkin. Granted, around this time, Culkin was working on Party Monster, but could they at least have casted someone who looks vaguely like him? 
  
• It wouldn't be right leaving the family at Christmas? Kevin, you do realise you've had to deal with being abandoned by your family during Christmas TWICE (including once in another state) and come out on top both times?
  
• Kidnapping has no middleman?  Doesn't it hinge on someone else being willing to actually give you money?
  
• Buzz is the troublemaker, not me. Even though some of the antics I did in the last two movies would probably keep me in jail.
  
• I'd be shocked at the fact that they have a smart house in 2002, but fuck it, Dekalog I has a Polish family in a Soviet-era tenement actually making moves towards that in 1988. If that can happen, why the fuck not these obscenely rich people in America 14 years later.
  
• Aw, man, the Royal Family coming to Chicago? As far as I can recall, Queen Elizabeth only made it to my neck of the woods once (and that was in 1959). Though King Charles made it twice, once in 1977 and once in 1986.
  
• Fuck, man. Imagine having Young Frankenstein on, but still feeling the need to have 12 more screens surrounding that screen, and have half of them showing some random extreme sports events.
  
• That's Marv? You sure? At least French Stewart looks a little closer to Daniel Stewart.
  
• The Smart home is that fucking easy to hack? Why do I get the feeling that Kryztof and Pawel from the Dekalog probably had better security on their proto-smart home? 
  
• Man. He already took the time to flood the bathroom in hopes that Marv and his wife would end up going there.
  
• And they didn't even fill up the bathroom before they opened up the floodgates. 
  
• Dude. You flooded the house. Don't say you didn't damage it. And why doesn't Kevin's dad know who Marv is? 
  
• Also, why didn't they have Harry return and not Marv? Harry's the "mastermind" of the Wet Bandits, and before you mention that Joe Pesci was retired by this point, recall that not a single actor reprised their roles from the original. Hell, looking up the common cast and crew between the two movies, there's ZERO overlap in the cast and crew. They didn't even mention John Hughes creating the characters from the original.
  
• Why is Jingle Bells in a minor key? 
  
• Who wants to be in a fast car when you're all alone, Kevin? There's probably some Formula 1 drivers willing to rise to the challenge. Or NASCAR. I don't think there's that much room for two in those cars.
  
• Espionage and bugging devices. Hmm, I wonder if those are going to come into play later.
  
• Is there a reason they're expecting Princes William and Harry to play with Kevin? Aren't they in their late teens at this point?
  
• Goddammit, there's a scene just like this in The Triflers. That Butler's going to come out of this either dead or convinced that he needs to start doing some human experimentation.
  
• And of course Marv was dumb enough to try and test his plan to bag the Prince by putting his wife in a bag that might not fit her. And at a fraction of an inch shy of 6 feet, that's a distinct possibility.
  
• How do they not notice that the Butler's frozen in ice? And how did Kevin not provide some concrete evidence that Marv is back?
  
• Why does the Prince look more like Maculay Culkin than Kevin does?
  

Next week, maybe on Christmas Day itself, Home Sweet Home Alone.