Normally by the time a film franchise reaches it's third or fourth in its series, one can usually hear the bottom of the barrel being scraped on the soundtrack. There are exceptions to this of course, but this Home Alone film is not an exception.
Home Alone: The Holiday Heist is clearly ultra modern; a video-game obsessed child, a moody teenager and parents who, thanks to the nature of the films, end up leaving their child home alone. The first two films this was done by accident. The third film was through illness of the main character, the fourth wasn't home alone at all (technically), and this fifth one doesn't leave the main character home alone, but with his older sister. He still gets the lion's share of screen time. Add a couple of bad guys who want to break into a house for some reason, the odd booby trap here and there and we have something that sounds like Home Alone.
Macaulay Culkin unfortunately grew up over the years so the mantel of being the Home Alone boy falls to other actors. For Holiday Heist, this landed in the lap of Christian Martyn, who was also in the Snowmen film and Be My Valentine. Martyn's performance is solid here given the material he has to work with.
Film wise, I half expected this to be even worse than Home Alone 4, which set the standard so low for this franchise that it was practically buried under the ground. Thankfully it was actually better than Home Alone 4, and if Holiday Heist had had a more polished script, better bad guys and had actually left the kid home alone as opposed to being in vocal communication with his big sister through the air duct, then this could have possibly snapped at the heels of Home Alone 3. Holiday Heist doesn't get anywhere near Home Alone and Home Alone 2; I'll be surprised if any future additions to this franchise do, to be honest. Worth a watch on a movie channel around the holiday season though.
Home Alone: The Holiday Heist is clearly ultra modern; a video-game obsessed child, a moody teenager and parents who, thanks to the nature of the films, end up leaving their child home alone. The first two films this was done by accident. The third film was through illness of the main character, the fourth wasn't home alone at all (technically), and this fifth one doesn't leave the main character home alone, but with his older sister. He still gets the lion's share of screen time. Add a couple of bad guys who want to break into a house for some reason, the odd booby trap here and there and we have something that sounds like Home Alone.
Macaulay Culkin unfortunately grew up over the years so the mantel of being the Home Alone boy falls to other actors. For Holiday Heist, this landed in the lap of Christian Martyn, who was also in the Snowmen film and Be My Valentine. Martyn's performance is solid here given the material he has to work with.
Film wise, I half expected this to be even worse than Home Alone 4, which set the standard so low for this franchise that it was practically buried under the ground. Thankfully it was actually better than Home Alone 4, and if Holiday Heist had had a more polished script, better bad guys and had actually left the kid home alone as opposed to being in vocal communication with his big sister through the air duct, then this could have possibly snapped at the heels of Home Alone 3. Holiday Heist doesn't get anywhere near Home Alone and Home Alone 2; I'll be surprised if any future additions to this franchise do, to be honest. Worth a watch on a movie channel around the holiday season though.