He’s simply the sardonic child archetype with little character beyond his quips at his mom’s expense. It’s thus a wonder that mother Carol (Aisling Bea) decided to take Max with her to an open house held by the film’s true stars, Pam (Ellie Kemper) and Jeff (Rob Delaney). These other young parents are reluctant about selling their home after the holidays, but due to tight finances they’re looking for an offer. That is until Jeff realizes one of his grandmother’s old dolls is worth $200k and he comes to believe that weird little smartass he just met, Max, took it. And wouldn’t you know it, Max is home alone when his extended family flies to Tokyo for Christmas, accidentally leaving Max behind at the house.
Max immediately has a ball while Jeff and Pam enter into a moral conundrum. Should they break into the supposedly empty house and steal the doll back? You can guess what happens next because you saw it the first time. Twice.
Ergo, it must be something worse than a generic sitcom: it’s content. At its most base and soulless. The kind which knows it will win every time bored families click “play” on their Disney+ homepage, so when’s lunch? This leads to lazy attempts to mimic the character beats from 1990, but Yates lacks either the range or direction to actually convey to the audience he really “misses my family” when he just blankly says so to a stranger, and Williams’ “Somewhere in My Memory” plays over the soundtrack.
You won’t buy it, although this does give a curious if unintentional menace to the actual “hijinks” scenes, like where Max lights the much more sympathetic Pam on fire as she tries to reason with him. As the origin story of a serial killer, it’s kind of chilling, but as a family movie, it’s hackneyed, unfunny, and off-putting. And it will still be watched millions of times this month because Devin Ratray (Buzz in the original movies) makes a cameo and mentions Kevin, something that will surely be placed on a loading screen.
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