Justice for Harry and Marv. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)

This is not a review. This is my core belief.

One of the greatest tragedies is seeing a masterpiece not be appreciated in its time. This can be said for my all-time favorite movie, one I watch year-round and have probably seen well over 100 times in my life. The fact that it has a 35% on Rotten Tomatoes despite being the most impactful movie I have ever had the pleasure to witness maybe says more about me than it does about the movie. But anyway, I digress. Today we’re talking about Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.

I have no interest in recapping the story. If you don’t know it by now, I don’t know what to tell you. This movie has been my favorite movie since it came out, and all throughout my life people have questioned me about why. They wonder why I wouldn’t like the first one better, since the second one is basically a rehash of the first one with less believable of coincidences and chances working in the favor of our protagonist, Kevin (Macauley Culkin). Well, dear readers, that reason is simple. The second one is like the first one if all the laws of the universe were held off. It’s more cartoonlike and since my brain is pretty cartoonlike itself, this movie has always hit every pleasure zone in my brain every time I watch it.

There’s a lot I can talk about with this movie, but I want to keep things simple. I would like to make the case that the Wet Bandits, Harry Lime and Marv Merchants (Joe Pesci and Daniel Fucking Goddamn Stern), are the greatest movie characters of all time, and even though it’s not the ending the public would have wanted, I think they should have gotten away with their Duncan’s Toy Chest robbery.

Yes, Kevin getting himself away from the escaped convicts and putting himself right back in the line of danger to take pictures of them robbing the store (to later implicate them) is his bait to get the bad guys to follow him to the booby-trapped house his uncle is renovating in Brooklyn. Never mind the fact that Kevin went over a whole other borough with these guys a few steps behind him the whole time but never catching up (what, did they grab consecutive trains?), he somehow is able to set up a house he’s never been in to do feats that he would need electrical engineering courses to be able to pull off, nearly killing the bad guys and getting saved by Pigeon Lady, seeing our Wet Bandits, err…Sticky Bandits, get taken by NYPD with all the evidence of their wrongdoings thrown through the window of Duncan’s Toy Chest. This, dear reader, is absolute bullshit.

Here’s the first thing. The Wet Bandits were caught by Kevin when he tripped the store’s alarm, but all they had to do was not follow him. They already had a plan to escape the country with phony passports and finally live themselves a good life, and I really wish they were able to do that. Why follow this little dipshit who was responsible for locking you up the year before? Just take the money and run, boys! Fuck the evidence, you could be in Delaware by the time the cops put anything together. It’s 1992 for christ’s sake. There’s no CCTV in that old ass toy store. Just go!

I do have to respect the process, however. They wanted to actually get revenge on Kevin and not just get away. That’s cool. But once he was pitching bricks from the roof, that would have been my point to let him know, hey kid, we’re getting away and you can go suck a brick. Like, he’s on the roof. Clearly, he has you set up like he did the year before. This is the point where my heroes, the movie villains, clearly lost the upper hand. Any advantage they would have had went out the window the second they entered Kevin’s circus of pain. They suffer through fire, electrical shock, metal to the dome, a toolchest falling down the stairs, a kerosene fire. It hurts to watch as the real heroes of the movie suffer because of a demonic little boy.

I’m not saying Harry should have shot Kevin. I would never advocate for the shooting of a child. But he could have put a little more fear in Kevin’s heart. There is no way my heroes should have been doomed to go back to prison. They should be off in Rio, stealing beachwear from tourists, plotting on how to spend all the money. That’s the ending I wanted. That’s the one I play in my head.

So how do you feel? Are you a fan of Marv and Harry, or are you a fan of the psychotic selfish child that shares my name? Marv is my all-time favorite movie character and it hurts to know he didn’t get to live the life he wanted. But that’s life. That’s what people say. We have one more Christmas issue this week, the big daddy of ‘em all, so make sure you pay attention to your inboxes tomorrow and load up Disney Plus to run Home Alone 2 tonight. Do it for Harry and Marv.