Baby's Day Out Details

Love him or hate him, John Hughes certainly hit upon a winning formula with Home Alone. Here he comes up with another successful spin on the small-things-humiliating-adults theme, with a wee baby standing in for Macaulay Culkin. The little tot — the precious child of a wealthy family — is snatched by a bungling trio of kidnappers and blithely proceeds to make their life hell. Unsurprisingly, wit and subtlety are hardly to the fore and at times the film is a little too cosy for its own good. However, the action does rip along at a cracking pace, the comic set pieces are executed with precision, and Joe Mantegna, Joe Pantoliano and Brian Haley are good fun as the incompetent crooks.

The Home Alone formula, of cute kid, dim crooks and violent slapstick topped with sentimentality, fails to raise a laugh this time around.