I'll give this juvenile comedy credit for one thing. It assembled together a huge cast of comic geniuses together, everybody from Ruth Buzzi and Charles Nelson Reilly to husband and wife Dom De Luise and Carol Arthur, Oscar winner Jon Voight, airplane stewardess Julie Hagerty and the legendary Mickey Rooney. It's a combination of intentional camp (always a bad sign), and genuinely unfunny gags that make this more like "the rip-off movie", starting with that "Pee Wee Herman's Big Adventure" through the blatant theft of ideas from the past it's prime "Home Alone" movies.
The obnoxious Randy Travis and Ms. Hagerty are the parents of two terrors whom I never expect to see on screen again. It's like watching a marathon of those hideous family related commercials that think they are clever and make TV breaks bathroom time. OK, I did find myself chuckling at them a few times, but honestly, the urge to fast forward to the older actor cameos is more appealing. There's Rooney as Travis's big boss, De Luise as (what else?) a temperamental chef, Voight as the intimidating detective, Catherine Oxenberg as an obnoxious, hideously over the top vixen, Arthur as Rooney's Janet Reno look-alike secretary, and get this, Ruth and Reilly as a married couple living next door and commenting on all the goings on.
But most of all, besides the rip-off plot theft, it's a huge Toy's r Us advertisement that falls flat pretty much from the start, even stealing some Danny Elfman sound alike music. The scheming young couple (Oxenberg and Michael de Luise) remind me of the villains on the "Beverly Hillbillies" movie, proof once again that this was nothing but patchwork. Reilly gets a great line that kept me interested...in what he was going to say. "With neighbors like these, who needs cable?" But, I'll refer to this as the type of film you do not lend to friends...unless you want to get rid of that friend.
The obnoxious Randy Travis and Ms. Hagerty are the parents of two terrors whom I never expect to see on screen again. It's like watching a marathon of those hideous family related commercials that think they are clever and make TV breaks bathroom time. OK, I did find myself chuckling at them a few times, but honestly, the urge to fast forward to the older actor cameos is more appealing. There's Rooney as Travis's big boss, De Luise as (what else?) a temperamental chef, Voight as the intimidating detective, Catherine Oxenberg as an obnoxious, hideously over the top vixen, Arthur as Rooney's Janet Reno look-alike secretary, and get this, Ruth and Reilly as a married couple living next door and commenting on all the goings on.
But most of all, besides the rip-off plot theft, it's a huge Toy's r Us advertisement that falls flat pretty much from the start, even stealing some Danny Elfman sound alike music. The scheming young couple (Oxenberg and Michael de Luise) remind me of the villains on the "Beverly Hillbillies" movie, proof once again that this was nothing but patchwork. Reilly gets a great line that kept me interested...in what he was going to say. "With neighbors like these, who needs cable?" But, I'll refer to this as the type of film you do not lend to friends...unless you want to get rid of that friend.