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Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

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Home Alone 2: Lost in New York is the 1992 sequel to the highly successful 1990 film Home Alone, written and produced by John Hughes and directed by Chris Columbus. It stars Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, and Daniel Stern. Catherine O'Hara, John Heard, Devin Ratray, Kieran Culkin, Gerry Bamman, Tim Curry, Rob Schneider, Dana Ivey, and Brenda Fricker co-star.

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York promotional movie poster
Directed byChris Colombus
Written byJohn Hughes
Produced byJohn Hughes
StarringMacaulay Culkin
Joe Pesci
Daniel Stern
John Heard
Tim Curry
Brenda Fricker
Catherine O'Hara
Music byJohn Williams
Distributed by20th Century Fox
Release dates
November 20, 1992
Running time
120 minutes
Country United States
LanguageEnglish

Veteran Hughes actor Eddie Bracken, "Brat Pack" actress Ally Sheedy, game show host Bob Eubanks and real estate mogul Donald Trump make cameo appearances. The movie was filmed in Winnetka, IL, O'Hare Airport in Chicago, Miami and New York City (which was star Culkin's hometown at the time).

Home Alone 3 followed in 1997 and Home Alone 4 followed in 2002; both without Macaulay Culkin or much of the original cast.

Plot

During the opening minutes of the movie, Kevin sings a solo in a school Christmas pageant; during his performance, his older brother Buzz sticks two candles behind his ears to embarrass him. As the crowd breaks down into laughter, Kevin realizes and pushes Buzz which causes the entire choir to collaps in a domino effect and the pageant to end. Buzz later apologizes in front of the family but then secretly sneers to Kevin, who then tells the family that he does not accept it, then complaining about spending Christmas in Miami, without any Christmas trees. Kate sends him to the third floor as a result.

The travel plans almost go wrong as Kevin's father accidentally resets his alarm, causing the family to wake up late and almost miss their flight. Kevin loses his family in O'Hare International Airport and follows a man wearing the same coat as Peter onto a different flight to New York City. Kevin's family realizes he is missing at the baggage check in the Miami International Airport when they pass his bag around. Meanwhile, in New York City, Kevin sees many of the sights, and then uses his father's credit card to check into The Plaza Hotel. He is serviced by bellhop Cedric (Rob Schneider). The hotel's concierge (played by Tim Curry) is suspicious of Kevin from the beginning.

The day after Kevin checks in, the hotel arranges for a limousine for him to tour the city. After asking the limo driver to take him to a toy store, Kevin is taken to the largest toy outlet in the city, Duncan's Toy Chest (a fictional version of F.A.O. Schwartz). Here he meets and befriends a clerk at the counter who later turns out to be Duncan himself (Eddie Bracken). After Kevin pays for a purchase, the clerk explains to Kevin that all the proceeds from Christmas Eve sales will be donated to a local children's hospital. Kevin gives $20.00 to the cause, at which point Duncan allows Kevin to take a small gift from a Christmas tree on the counter, suggesting he take the two turtledoves. He explains that he is supposed to keep one and give one to someone special to him.

While Kevin is away, the hotel's concierge finds out that Kevin has committed credit card fraud, since the credit card was his father's. He also runs into the Wet Bandits (now "Sticky Bandits"), Harry and Marv (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern), who have escaped from prison and plan to steal all the money from the toy store which was intended for the children's hospital. After running away from them, he makes it back to the hotel, only to find himself confronted with more trouble.

At the hotel, the Concierge takes Kevin's bag and takes away the credit card he used, after which Kevin bolts from the staff and into the lobby, where he slips past the staff and into the elevator to return to his room. As prepares to leave the hotel, the Concierge enters with four other staff members, including two hotel security officers. After some charades in the hotel room between the staff and a movie that involves an arguing gangster, Kevin escapes via the fire escape and the loading area, only to meet Marv and Harry at the exit.

Kevin manages to escape the thieves at Central Park. Afraid to return to the hotel and without his father's credit card, he uses his address book to find his uncle's house, only to find it vacant due to a renovation in progress. The streets (with their scary folk and prostitutes) at night offer Kevin little comfort and he runs into the park. After being initially scared, Kevin befriends a homeless "pigeon lady" (played by Brenda Fricker, whom he had first seen earlier in the movie) who takes him to the roof of Carnegie Hall where he learns more about her past as they eavesdrop on an orchestra playing below.

Meanwhile, the rest of the family is in a motel in Miami when they get the phone call from the police locating Mr. McCallister's credit card in New York City. The family promptly leaves for New York, where they check into the Plaza Hotel. After bragging about catching the stolen card, the Concierge is promptly admonished by Mrs. McCallister for chasing Kevin away where he could get lost in the city, at which point he offers the family a complimentary hotel suite as compensation. However, she is not satisfied and decides to spend the evening looking for Kevin.

As Kevin walks the streets of New York, he passes the children's hospital that Mr. Duncan mentioned earlier. After recalling the information given by Duncan and the thieves, Kevin plans to stop the robbery of the toy store. He first runs to his uncle's house and rigs it with traps using the construction materials in the house. He then runs to Duncan's Toy Chest and catches Harry and Marv pulling off the heist. After snapping a few photos with his camera, Kevin breaks the window with a brick with a note to Mr. Duncan tied to it, setting off the alarm, and runs back to his uncle's house. The bandits run after him in pursuit of the pictures. The two then enter the house to capture Kevin, but their efforts are hindered by the traps Kevin has set.

After contacting the police, Kevin lures the thieves out of the house toward the rendezvous point in Central Park, but he slips on ice during his escape and is captured by the bandits. The two take him to Central Park themselves and try to shoot him in private, but are seen by the pigeon lady, who throws birdseed on them, which sticks to their clothes because they are covered in varnish. Dozens of pigeons swarm the two frightened men. After the officers recover the evidence from Kevin, and after Marv stupidly brags about the robbery and prison escape, the bandits are taken into custody.

At the Lower Plaza of the Rockefeller Center, Kevin is praying in front of the giant Christmas tree; it is presumed at this time that Kevin has little hope or idea of where to go. Fortunately, his mother clues in Kevin's tendency to seek out the "the biggest Christmas tree" and locates him. While being briefed by police on the shoplifting, Mr. Duncan reads the message attached to the rock that broke the store window and foiled the shoplifting attempt and realizes that it was Kevin when referenced about the two doves. Mr. Duncan thanks him by sending him and his family a load of presents to their hotel suite for Christmas morning. Kevin's brother Buzz sincerely makes amends by saying that Kevin should open the first present. While the rest of the family is eagerly opening presents, Kevin slips away to Central Park to meet up with the pigeon lady, where he gives her one of the doves. The film concludes when Buzz gets the room service bill and gives it to Mr. McCallister, who then yells at Kevin for spending $967.43 on room service.

Injuries suffered by thieves

Several of these booby traps are similar to the ones Kevin used in Home Alone; though the burglars think that they have learned from their mistakes, Kevin is still one step ahead.

Harry

  • Catapulted into the air by a makeshift seesaw just outside the store window, and lands on top of a car, demolishing its roof and damaging his back.
  • Slips off a ladder outside the loft because the bottom rung is coated with lubricant grease.
  • Gets a bag of tools dumped on his head when he kicks open the back door.
  • Accidentally sets his head on fire with a ceiling-mounted flamethrower and tries to douse his head in the toilet, which Kevin has filled with highly explosive paint thinner. He gets the top of his hat ripped open and his face and teeth covered with black soot.
  • Attempts to climb up a ladder partially cut at the top to chase Kevin; the ladder breaks under his weight and collapses.

Marv

  • Gets hit by four bricks thrown by Kevin from the roof of the townhouse.
  • Gets stapled in the buttocks, crotch, and nose with staples from a staple gun mounted on the front door.
  • Misses a hole in the floor right inside the main entrance and falls face first into the basement.
  • Slips on liquid soap in the basement and slides into a shelf of paint cans which tips over onto him.
  • Gets electrocuted to within an inch of his life by an electric generator connected to the sink via alligator clips when he tries to wash the paint off.
  • Gets hit by a 100lb bag of concrete mix when trying to climb up a rope that has the bag attached.

Both

  • Slip on beads laid by Kevin in downtown New York the afternoon before the toy store robbery.
  • Get hit in the face by a lead pipe, knocking them backwards through the foyer hole, and into the basement. Kevin then cuts the ropes holding it, causing it to roll down the stairs and fall on the two.
  • Get their noses crunched by a door when a tool chest rolls down the penthouse stairs and bashes through, pinning them to the wall.
  • Fall from a kerosene-soaked rope after Kevin sets it on fire from below, causing them to crash through a scaffold before landing on the ground.
  • The cans of varnish stored on the scaffold boards are tossed up in the air by the burglars' impact and land on the two, blanketing them in the liquid.
  • Attacked by pigeons after the homeless woman throws a bucket of birdseed on them.

Box office

The movie opened to $31.1 million from 2,222 theaters, averaging $14,008 per site.[citation needed] While it started off better than the original, the final box office gross was much less.[citation needed] $173,585,516 was taken in domestically and $185,406,165 overseas.[citation needed].

Video games

As with the first Home Alone movie, video games based on the sequel were released by THQ for such systems as the Sega Genesis, the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy and personal computers, mostly in late 1992. A separate hand-held game was released by Tiger Electronics.

References to other media

Like the film Angels With Filthy Souls in the first film, Kevin's hotel video rental Angels With Even Filthier Souls is not a movie but rather specially-created footage. Both movies were a homage to the 1939 film Angels with Dirty Faces. The cheating woman in Even Filthier Souls is played by Claire Hoak.

New York sights

The following landmarks and other New York City points of interest are seen in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York:

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