John Hughes, the writer of Home Alone, whose box-office takings have made it the biggest comedy money-spinner of all time, has had more hits than misses in his career. There are a few good belly laughs in this caper about a family holiday going disastrously wrong and the pairing of Dan Aykroyd (always better when playing an unsympathetic character) and John Candy works well, but the material is on the whole depressingly threadbare. Fans of up-and-coming star Annette Bening will recognise her in one of her earliest roles as Aykroyd's pampered wife. The distributors thought so little of the movie's chances outside America that it didn't even get a British cinema release, going direct to video instead.