![]() It’s another when we get a big-budget Robin Hood trying to replicate the low-budget (and R-rated) thrills of John Wick. It’s one thing when a big-budget Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves succeeded as a “kinda like the big-budget Batman” grimdark reboot. Insidious wasn’t a direct riff on Poltergeist, but it was a “rip off, don’t remake” success that spawned three sequels as the 2015 remake of Poltergeist crashed-and-burned. The Fast and the Furious was a loose remake of Point Break, and by the time Hollywood remade Point Break to empty theaters Furious 7 was racing past $1.517 billion worldwide. George Lucas couldn’t get the rights to Flash Gordon, so he made Star Wars whose success spawned the 1980 version of Flash Gordon. There are a number of IP cash-ins that attempted to replicate the success of an original movie which was trying to rip-off the IP in question. Nonetheless, Dennis the Menace was an IP adaptation that was almost certainly greenlit after and meant to replicate the success of the entirely original Home Alone. This subplot wasn’t exactly well-received, but I’d argue it was at least partially about adults overestimating the extent that kids would be scared of a strictly PG-rated criminal in an otherwise G-rated movie. Dennis the Menace is produced and written by Hughes, involves a new potential child star as a trouble-making tyke and features a knife-wielding thief played by Christopher Lloyd who adds third-act menace and gets taken down in classic Kevin McCallister fashion. There’s an irony to that considering he likely wrote and produced Home Alone as just another outside-the-sandbox flick, like Plains Trains and Automobiles, Only the Lonely and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, which he partially made to avoid getting typecast as a maker of teen melodramas. Be it a case of chasing easy money or taking what was offered, Hughes spent the next nine years (he would die of a heart attack at 59, eleven years ago this past Thursday) as a writer and/or producer attempting to recapture the success of Home Alone. They generally featured young children or animals as protagonists and bumbling criminals getting their Jigsaw-worthy comeuppance. Even Hughes’ later movies, either as a producer or as a writer, that didn’t follow a Home Alone-specific formula, were frantic comic farces ( Baby’s Day Out, Beethoven, Flubber, 101 Dalmatians, etc.) intended for young kids. Career Opportunities tried to blend teen angst with “smart kids outwit bumbling burglars” antics that made Home Alone a $285 million-grossing domestic smash (the third-biggest grosser ever at the time behind E.T. ![]() Curly Sue was an attempt to make Alisan Porter into a Macaulay Culkin-sized child star.
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