In Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, despite of all the commotions caused during "Operation: Ho Ho Ho" (i.e. Marv getting hit with bricks in the street, a large kerosene explosion on the second floor, and the hail of varnish cans out by the front patio), why did none of the neighbors appear concerned enough to call the police?


This may be listed as goof on IMDb, but there is an explanation for this.

It seems no neighbor was concerned about calling the police, because probably no one saw it.

Remember it's midnight on Christmas. Everybody must be at either Church, or enjoying festival treats at sofa, or sleeping. If you look at the street where that house was located at was completely empty. No one was walking through the street at that time.

During winter time, we tend to stay inside at night unless we got some work to do. Nobody really pays attention to what happening outside unless it is too noisy which leads to the question why they didn't hear the kerosene explosion.

The kerosene explosion was too short to live. If it might have alerted any neighbor, they won't see anything because it didn't do any damage to the house from outside and since it's under-construction and all of them were inside the house, nobody would have really paid attention to it.

The other trap of varnish cans was too loud. But the people in the adjacent buildings seem to be sleeping or absent. Even if they were present, it'd take time to understand what happened and take a look outside. If they will look outside, they won't really see anything because all cans were in that section below the ground level. If they had come outside to look, both crooks had already left by then.

  • would be helpful to have some kind of source listed to back this answer up. I'm not saying this answer is wrong, but at this point it seems like this is just an opinion. Maybe someone could find something backing it up. I tried, but all I found was IMDB admitting it was just a plot hole. – Kevin Cummings Feb 14 '18 at 17:00
  • If a question can be answered from the movie itself, then there is no need to add a source. It may be good to add if there is any, but it's not compulsory. – A J Mar 8 '18 at 10:54

This is an admitted plot hole in the movie. Basically the neighbors don't call the police because it would ruin the rest of the movie by resolving it too quickly. You could get imaginative and think up reasons. But it is just a bad plot hole. One of many in this movie along with an unusually large number of "Goofs, Mistakes, and Errors" as can be seen at the website listed below. Some are actually quite interesting.


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