Home Alone 1990

There are many reasons why this film will always be a Christmas Classic. It's filled with exactly the right ingredients for the whole family to enjoy year after year forever more. The story is simple: A huge family go on holiday, and carelessly leave their son Kevin behind. While home alone, Kevin uses booby traps to fight off two burglars.

The acting by all members of the cast is spot on. They all play a part to make the unrealistic seem believable. We really believe that the parents have forgotten about Kevin until the mother suddenly remembers that he's not there. Her reaction was spot on: Not overdramatic, but believably startled.

I always forget about John Candy's appearance in this film and he will guarantee to make you smile in any movie. So it's always a lovely surprise to see him.

Janet Hirshenson and Jane Jenkins did an amazing job at casting the two burglars, played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern. They couldn't be more right for the part. They provided most of the silly slapstick, which was always bound to win me over.

It goes without saying that Macauley Culkin is a phenomenal actor. I'm NOT gonna use the phrase "for his age", because that's patronising and he is as equally as talented as all the other adult actors in the film. He is fantastic throughout but there was one shot that stood out for me. He was carrying many bags of shopping home, and all the bags tear at the bottom, and everything falls on the floor at once. He breaks the fourth wall and looks directly into the camera, and his arms drop to the side. This shot alone demonstrates how incredible he is as a comedian and how skilled he is as an actor. No other actor or comedian could have played this shot so well, especially as the camera is quite a distance from him. Oliver Hardy would've applauded that scene. However Macauley does a fantastic job throughout the film. Not just this scene. He is truly remarkable.

The music used throughout this film really makes you feel in the festive spirit. It's an emotionally uplifting ending, as any decent Christmas film is. The whole film is heartwarming and it's absolutely a must watch movie. I will always love it, and I'll be watching it every year for the rest of my life.

Home Alone is a perfect movie, not in the sense that there is zero room for improvement or it's the greatest artistic achievement in human history, but in that it does what it sets out to do in a nigh-flawless fashion. It is impeccably paced, shot, and edited. It has the right balance of escapist fantasy, relatable family drama, humor, heart, and even slapstick comedy to keep the film lively without making it a piece of fluff. And miraculously, despite a cast full of ringers like Catherine O’Hara and Joe Pesci, the whole thing hinges on the acting talents of a nine-year-old boy who pulls it off with flying colors.

Because as great as O’Hara is as the mother desperate to get back to her son, as amusing as Pesci and Daniel Stern are as a pair of robbers who get more than they bargained for, as hilarious as the inimitable John Candy (who steals the show with less than five minutes of screen time) is as a polka-playing good Samaritan, Home Alone is, first and foremost, a story about Kevin McCallister, and even at that tender age, Culkin (with a huge assist from writer John Hughes and director Chris Columbus) sells that story like a champ.

That’s part of why Home Alone works so perfectly as a family movie that plays with both kids and adults. As a child, the more outsized elements of the story loom large. The iconic scenes of Kevin tormenting his pursuers offer a spate of perfectly deployed slapstick, worthy of Looney Tunes or The Three Stooges and apt to elicit any number of giggles from the younger members of the audience. By the same token, there’s an escapist fantasy for kids in the early part of the film, where Kevin jumps on the bed, eats junk, and “watches rubbish” without anyone being able to tell him otherwise. There is an incredible sense of fun to these scenes, whether it’s the ACME-inspired antics and great physical performances of the “Wet Bandits” or Kevin living out the immediate joy of his wish to be family-free.

But what makes the film more than just an insubstantial flight of fancy is the way it mixes that holiday mirth with enough heft, enough of the downside of that wish and a stealthily nuanced depiction of a young child maturing in both his ability to take care of himself and his understanding of the world.

When we meet Kevin in the film’s frenetic opening sequence, showing an entire household abuzz with cousins and uncles all in a state of pre-travel frenzy, Kevin cannot even pack his own suitcase. There’s recurring jabs from his siblings and cousins that his mom has to do everything for him. Over the course of the film, when pressed into service by being the all to his lonesome, Kevin becomes a surprisingly self-sufficient little boy. When not smothered by a score of other siblings, he shows a surprising resourcefulness, proving himself able to go to the store, do laundry, and even leave out cookies for Santa Claus when the time arrives. This culminates in the cornucopia of traps Kevin sets for the robbers, proving that he is even capable of defending his house from those who would do his family harm.

In the process, Kevin overcomes a number of his fears, which provides another thematic throughline for the film. Chris Columbus and Director of Photography Julio Macat help this part of the story tremendously by the way a series of normal things are made frightening by shooting them from Kevin’s perspective. From the low shot on the furnace in the basement as it seems to taunt and beckon Kevin while he’s doing laundry, to the scene in the store where Old Man Marley is introduced only by his big black boots, seeming to glower down at Kevin from high above, Macat’s camera keeps us inside Kevin’s head, seeing the terror in these otherwise quotidian interactions. That cinches Kevin’s transition when he tells the furnace not to bother – we understand what he’s overcoming.

The heart of the movie, however, comes through in the scene where he conquers his other big fear – his scary looking next door neighbor, whom his brother described as a secret murderer the cops couldn’t catch. When Kevin runs into him at church, he discovers that Marley isn’t some serial ghoul, but rather a kindly old man who offers him a bit of solace and comfort in a time of need.

It’s an incredibly well-written scene, bolstered by the stellar performance of Roberts Blossom as Marley and Culkin playing Kevin at his most precocious and worldly. Blossom sells the utter warmth and humanity of Blossom behind his icy visage. His sitting next to Kevin as a friendly presence, telling a small part of his life story, and speaking to the lad as something approaching an equal provides a big leap for the film’s protagonist. It’s part of that maturation process, the realization that he shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, that he can’t necessarily trust his brother’s accounts, and that the people who seem the most unnerving can be the people you want in your hour of need. In one scene, Old Man Marley goes from being the film’s great threat to being its heart.

And he ties into the other big motif running through the film – an appreciation of one’s family. What could easily be a trite Hallmark card of a message from the movie has real force from the way the lesson is delivered. When Kevin wishes he had no family, the film helps us understand why, putting him in that relatable little kid situation of causing a scene, feeling you were goaded into it, and that nobody takes treats you nicely or appreciates you. And then when his wish comes true, it takes some time to let the audience, and Kevin, revel in his newfound freedom. But it also show’s Kevin slowly but surely realizing that he misses them, and that as much as they drive him nuts sometimes, having them back is what he really wants for Christmas.

That’s why the scene and story of Old Man Marley’s estrangement with his son is so important. It’s center on the idea that the issues Kevin is dealing with – fear, family discontent, loneliness around the holidays – are not unique to him or his tender age, but are universal obstacles that people of all ages confront at various points in their life. It’s a sign of Kevin’s broadening perspective, the way he’s being changed by this experience and learns that it’s possible to love your family even when you’re angry with them.

It’s also his realization that even in those impulsive moments, whether you’re an old man or a little boy, that you make grand declarations about not wanting to be a part of your family anymore, you may soon find yourself regretting it, yearning for the thing you were so ready to give up. Kevin starts to understand this in Home Alone, and it’s why his sincere plea to one of Santa’s “messengers” (who amusingly offers him tic tacs and can’t get his car started) to bring his family back has weight and meaning.

All of this is able to come together so well because so many of the technical, or less showy parts of the film are all done extraordinarily well. John Williams’s score expertly matches the mood of the film at every turn, whether he’s playing yuletide pop classics or an orchestral score that fits a grand escape or moment of tension. The writing has a clockwork quality to it. Hughes’s script accounts for the circumstances in which a nine-year-old would left alone by himself, unable to be contacted by his parents or the authorities in a nicely plausible fashion, and he constructs a series of events in which Kevin believes he wished his family away and then wished them back in a way that is equally convincing for the kid and the viewer.

And the film is shot and edited superbly, with amusing cuts like Kevin calling out for his mother with an immediate smash cut to a roaring airplane, or the frenzied fashion in which the McCallisters are depicted racing through the airport. Every part of this film works in sync, to deliver a visually exciting, narratively sound work that lets its humor, story, and message, land without a hint of friction.

So when we reach the end of the film and see Kevin’s reunion with his family, and Old Man Marley’s reunion with his, both moments feel earned. Chris Columbus tells a nigh-wordless story in the final scene, with O’Hara’s Kate McCallister silently marveling at how great the house looks and Kevin offering an expression of reluctance, one that suggests he might still be holding onto the anger he unleashed at this mother the last time they were face to face, before quickly sliding into a smile and running to embrace her. Their expressions tell the story, of the way both mother and child now see each other differently on this Christmas Day. The same goes for the expression of gratitude, of near-tearful camaraderie, between Kevin and Old Man Marley as Kevin witnesses his new friends’ reunion with a family of his own. Everyone here has grown; everyone has taken chances despite their fears, and come out better for it.

Throughout all of this, Home Alone manages to be cute, sweet, thrilling, funny, sharp, clever, and hopeful. For films set alone the holiday, it’s all too easy to lean into maudlin sentiment or cloying comedy, but Hughes’s and Columbus’s collaboration produced a film that manages to be nimble and amusing from start to finish, with enough meaning and mirth in it to make the story told feel as important as it is small. Home Alone tells the tale of a young man learning that despite his fear, his inexperience, and his familial resentments, he’s ready to take his first step into adulthood, and finds in the process that what he needs most are the people he was afraid of or wanted to wish away.

My family actually often skips out on watching "Home Alone" on Christmas, as there's no denying the movie can be considered overplayed. I hadn't watched in years, at least to my memory. I do remember loving it as a child, though. Enough time has passed, so why not give it a retrospective look from a more mature point of view?

One thing that should be said about "Home Alone" is that it's a, frankly, stupid movie. In regards to its logic. That is not an issue with it, of course. It's very silly and over-the-top, yet it's part of the charm. If you can let yourself enjoy it, the movie captivates you with its ridiculous antics, which would easily result in severe trauma, perhaps death, in the real world. Third-degree burns, concussions, bruises. It's surprising how violent this movie would have been had it not had the charming Christmas thematic. Ah well, who cares though? It's fun, and that's all that matters.

The premise itself perhaps bothers me a little more than anything else, as the beginning of the movie made me sympathise with Kevin a little too much, to the point where I had some issues with the supposed lessons he learned. I mean, his family was treating him worse than he deserved in all honesty, I really can't see what he did wrong. It kind of forces the whole abandonement plotline, which is where all the joy really comes from. But I just couldn't buy the relationship dynamic they were trying to set up in the family, except maybe for his mother, who genuinely seemed to care for Kevin. Her appearances were pretty funny as well.

The theme of family is better explored in the character of Marley, whose story I found to be much more charming and genuinely affected. It had a lovably corny ending that I do not wish to spoil. I will just say that he and Kevin had a great chemistry for the screentime they shared.

Regarding performances, props need to be given to Macaulay Culkin. For someone this young of age, he has an incredibly endearing on-screen presence. It never quite falls into the pitfalls of child actor cliches and exudes an incredible charisma. While the other actors do a good job as well, he is the one who really stands out.

The gimmicks of the film are genuinely funny and, as harmful as they might be to the robbers, provide endless fun for the family. The premise, as I said before, enforces certain liberties to be taken, but once it sets off, the film never lets go. Watching Kevin go around and try to act like an adult is very charming, but moreso are his antics in trying to protect his home. I was a bit disappointed at how short the home defense actually was, as I remembered it being longer. Though I can't hold it against the movie, as it does not drag on any longer than it needs to.

"Home Alone" has a lot going for it, and a lot of it is nostalgia. However, I do not treat this as a flaw. It's a movie that grows on you and has become a undeniable classic in the realm of Christmas movies. Many movies afterwards (including those carrying the same name) have tried to recapture its charm afterwards, for the most part failing to do so. There's a feeling of comfort to "Home Alone" that I really like. I can't deny its just too enjoyable to spew cynicism at.

Basically a live-action Wile E. Coyote / Roadrunner Christmas, with a few humanist subplots thrown in for good measure. John Hughes comedies have often struggled to indulge the author's wackier side without stumbling too far into the realm of slapstick, and Home Alone never really finds that balance. There's a lot of effective material here - the sweet old neighbor’s redemption story; Kevin's first steps toward independence; his mother's frantic, airport-skipping quest to get home - but those deeper themes feel too scattered, obvious second (or third) fiddles to the more bombastic third-act fireworks.

The production also feels loose and cheap, rife with overdone performances, blunt direction and easy, convenient physical gags. Macaulay Culkin's acting in the lead is borderline unbearable, and the cache of gimmicks and booby traps that fuel his story often asks far too much of the audience. As I mentioned above, growth is a major part of his character arc, but right from the start, most of his word choices and the breadth of his worldly knowledge seems highly suspect for the pampered youngest son of a large, well-off suburban family. Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern pick up some slack as a duo of over-amplified burglar stereotypes, played with a wink and a nudge at just the right moments, and Catherine O'Hara shines in a rare straight role as the flustered mother an ocean away from her youngest child.

Straightforward and light for the majority of its run time, the film works best when it remembers to pluck the heartstrings with a few season-specific character moments and subplots. Still, it's all too detached from reality, with a strange habit of glorifying and celebrating its frequent scenes of grisly, wince-inducing violence.