It’s not the holidays until you’ve seen a rerun of Christmas-season 1990s classic Home Alone starring Macaulay Culkin as the spunky, inventive Kevin McAllister. And now we have an update for 2018, nearly three decades later. This time, Culkin is a grown-up McAllister — but he’s still all alone at his house, which hasn’t changed at all, from the retro decor to his choice of dinner and snacks. In the ad, created with Google Assistant, Culkin reenacts some of his most famous scenes from the beloved movie with an adult twist.
“Hey Google, what’s on my calendar today?” Culkin wonders after waking up and finding himself alone without his parents.
“You have one event called ‘house to yourself,’” the Google Assistant responds. And with that, he begins the rituals that movie fans know so well.
But there are some updates that suggest the passage of time. For one, he actually needs to shave this time. For another, his back gets thrown out when he jumps on the bed. And since this is a Google Assistant ad, the biggest adjustment is that Culkin has now retrofitted his house to be a smart home. Instead of having to put together ingenious traps for intruders in real time, or find a way to pay the pizza delivery guy without appearing himself, McAllister has everything set up automatically.
Turns out it’s pretty simple to ward off thieves when you’ve got a voice-activated tech assistant — or so Google would like us to believe.
