Home Alone 2: Lost in New York – Blu-ray Disc Review

October 20, 2009 – 8:07 PM - Posted by: Danielle Byington

Tags: Brenda Fricker, Catherine O'Hara, Chris Columbus, Daniel Stern, Eddie Bracken, FOX, Joe Pesci, John Heard, John Hughes, Macaulay Culkin, Rob Schneider, Tim Curry

has an average rating of 5.7 on IMDb
1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a 25gb disc
DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio
only include 3 trailers
–
– 1992
– 103 minutes
– FOX
–
This uses 20.5GB for the movie out of 21.1GB total.

Overall Verdict – Strictly for the Fans

Buy it for $23.99 @ Amazon.com

— Review written by: Danielle Byington —

Trailer:

The Movie Itself is directed by Chris Columbus, and written by John Hughes. The story uses a very similar formula as the first film, “Home Alone“, with nearly the entire cast reprising their roles.

We start again in this sequel within the McCallister home, which is once again flooded with extra family, friends, and the pre-vacation chaos. This year the family is heading to Florida for Christmas, and just like the year before, alarms fail to wake, and the numerous family members and scattering about the large Chicago home to hurry into the charter transportation to arrive at the airport on time. A few extras notices are taken to make sure Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) is not left behind again, as he actually makes it to the airport with his family this time. However, the family’s hassle to sprint to their boarding gate leaves their youngest behind again, as he stops to get batteries out of his father’s bag before boarding the plane, and returns to follow a man of similar dress and physical features thinking it is his dad. The incorrect man Kevin has followed leads him onto the wrong plane that is heading into the complete opposite direction of Florida; New York.

Realizing the mistake that he has made, Kevin goes ahead with making the best of his situation while his family is a few states away, and are about to realize that they have yet again lost track of him. After taking a cab around the city and seeing the sites, Kevin cleverly books a room at The Plaza hotel, all with his handy Talkboy, disguising his voice to portray his father. The lie goes fairly smooth for a while, until Mr. Hector (Tim Curry), a hotel concierge, continues to dabble in his suspicions of the young boy with the fictional businessman-father lies, further discovering that the credit card Kevin checked-in with (which actually was his father’s) has been dubbed “stolen”, but only because his parents have taken this measure to hopefully find where their son is if he were to use the card. Running away from the hotel as Mr. Hector and his co-workers attempt to ambush him, Kevin finds himself on the streets of New York City, ironically enough coming face-to-face again with the crooks who attempted to rob his house the Christmas before. This is of course bad news for Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern) as well, as they are only subjecting themselves to the intelligently brutal defense of Kevin once more.

Overall, looking back on “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York“, it is one of those sequels that does not make people squirm, using the same successful formula of a slightly neglectful family losing track of their resourceful son, and the undetermined plotting of the bandit goons, who, no matter how uncanny it is, are in the right place at the right time in a large city with Kevin. This movie’s story was fairly strong, though its drawback is perhaps the fact that no matter how many spoilers the studio could have excluded from the trailers, the first film’s audience already knows that Kevin is a child-MacGyver, and Harry and Marv are easily out-smarted. This does not leave too much to the imagination, except for the exact details of just how the crooks are going to receive a beating from a kid. However, the John Hughes flavored dialogue and scenarios is a significant factor in what allows the movie to survive, with several comedic points, as well as the addition of Tim Curry‘s character. Overall, though perhaps not as favorable as the first film by some, “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” is a considerably, if not equally, entertaining holiday flick, receiving a “4 Star Rating“.

Video Quality on this release is in full 1080p using the AVC MPEG-4 codec on a BD-25 (25 gigabyte single layer Blu-ray Disc) in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Unlike the first film (“Home Alone“), this does not receive as impressive of a Hi-Def transfer; a number of scenes do look bright and clean, however, the large majority of the release is rough. Some scenes retain their film grain, which is often heavy at times, even lending a large amount of salt & pepper grain in hues of the palette that are the slightest bit dark; but, even this is not consistent, as occasionally it appears subjects that show-off the solid black level have received a touch-up in select scenes, giving them an inkier appearance, while the rest of the shot does retain the film grain. On the other hand, signs of a Digital Noise Reduction (DNR) filter are very much so present in other scenes, as the heavy grain is suddenly absent, and the picture looks dramatically more clear, though very smooth in definition. This may have only been applied to select scenes that were perhaps considered just too raw in appearance, but either way, it is definitely a fluctuation your eyes will notice through out the release’s runtime. One of the most significant examples of this happens in a scene of The Sticky Bandits strolling through a crosswalk, as this shot is plagued by the use of DNR, with especially the textured lines on Marv‘s coat insanely flickering; then, immediately following this scene, we are shown Kevin as he first enters The Plaza hotel, which bares the return of the heavy film grain.

The color palette is mostly showcased with neutral tones, offering a moderate vibrancy in the variety of exterior shots of New York City (especially seen with the numerous taxi cabs), the interiors of The Plaza, and shots of Central Park, most of which bare a lot of reds with the abundance of Christmas decor both indoors and outdoors. Fleshtones are generally accurate within this color palette, and just as mentioned above, the black level is solid for the most part, perhaps just slipping up a few times depending on the video quality of the scene. A number of artifacts are still present, though none so large or numerous that it is visually distracting, there is also the occasional interframe deformation present. Regarding the paragraph’s description of film grain remaining in portions of the film, and being removed in others, detail is as you may have guessed, not incredible, more or so leaving a rather smooth look for the entirety of the release. Overall, I was personally expecting more for the video of this release as “Home Alone” earned itself a nice rating last year, however, this sequel merely earns a “2.5 Star Rating“.

Audio Quality on this release is presented in DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio. This audio track does offer a fairly impressive blend regarding the present foley from the film’s content. With the beginning of the film, you’ve got Uncle Frank singing in the shower as Kevin attempts to sneak in to get his belongings that must be packed; the sounds of Uncle Frank‘s voice come from the center front channel, with a bit of reverb in the left and right front channels, as well as the music from his radio and the sound of a running shower being conveyed from the front channels and moving subtly within the rear channels following Kevin‘s stealthy entrance into the bathroom. Moving along not so far into the film, the striking of the jockey lawn ornament in front of the McCallister home by a vehicle is again revived in this sequel, and as the slight collision of bumper-meets-jockey occurs, the “ding” passes from the left front channel, and to the right front channel as it collapses onto the driveway, matching the on-screen movements.

These are alone a couple of nice examples of what is offered by this release’s audio track, and the performance does continue through out the film, such as the tommy gun scene in “Angels With Even Filthier Souls”, and all of the accompanying foley of Kevin‘s one-man (or kid) security system within his uncle’s pre-renovated townhouse. The score that is very familiar does sound equally as nice as on “Home Alone“, making full use of the 5.1 setup, with even a soft bit of bass presence from the percussion. Dialogue has no flaws, presented from primarily the center front channel, except when of course accommodating the many scenes crowded with extras on the streets of New York City, The Plaza, and Duncan’s Toy Chest. Overall, the audio quality on this release earns a solid “4 Star Rating“.

Bonus Materials are presented in both High Definition and Standard Definition video with DTS 2.0 Stereo, as well as Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo sound.

• “‘Home Alone’ Theatrical Trailer” (HD, DTS, 2 minutes)
• “‘Home Alone 2: Lost in New York‘ (SD, Dolby, 1 minute)
• “‘Home Alone 3′” (SD, Dolby, 2 minutes)

Blu-ray Disc packaging:

NOTE: The full-sized 1920×1080 files are in a .PNG file format and uncompressed. Bare with the slow loading times, keep in mind these files are at least 1MB (1 megabyte) in size each.

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