Hi, and welcome back to the theater!
For this installment, I’ll be looking at one of the few Christmas movies on this list that I saw in theaters (Though I was about 6 years old at the time): ‘Home Alone.’ Made in 1990, it was directed by Chris Columbus, written and produced by the late John Hughes, and stars Catherine O’Hara, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern, and of course Macaulay Culkin in the role that made him famous (For about 4 or 5 years, anyway, before the “Former child star†curse hit him hard).
We start with the McAllister family, a large and wealthy extended family from Chicago, planning a big vacation to go to Paris for Christmas. The night before they are to leave, their 8- year- old son Kevin (Culkin) has an altercation with his boorish bully of an older brother, Buzz (The ultimate epitome of the mean older brother so many kids have), which leaves the family angry at him and Kevin so furious at them in turn that he openly says he never wants to see any of them again. A power outage that night resets the family’s alarm clocks, causing them to unwittingly sleep in, and in their consequent mad rush to get to the airport in time for their flight, they unwittingly leave Kevin behind (He had been sleeping alone in the attic and apparently unwoken by their rush to get out the door).
When Kevin’s mom Kate (O’Hara) discovers her son is missing, she begins frantically trying to find a way to get home to him. She boards one flight after another, growing ever more desperate as time goes on, before finally getting a ride from a polka band leader (The late John Candy, who’s his usual jolly, friendly self here) for the last leg of the trip home.
During this time, their house and the other houses in the rather affluent neighborhood they live in are targeted by Harry and Marv (Pesci and Stern), two cruel yet idiotic cat burglars nicknamed “The Wet Bandits†for Marv’s habit of leaving the water running in the houses they rob. The burglars know most of that neighborhood’s families are going to be out on vacation (Harry had posed as a police officer to case the houses in the beginning of the movie and figure out which families would be gone), and are planning on plundering every last one of them in the space of a few days.
However, amidst these subplots, Kevin remains the star and focal point of the movie. He is at first overjoyed to have the house to himself. He pigs out on junk food, rides his sled down a flight of stairs and out the front door, and gets into other sorts of mischief. You also see, though, that he is scared of a lot of things; Scared of the weird- sounding furnace in his basement, scared of an elderly, snow- shoveling neighbor whom Buzz told him is a serial killer, and most of all scared of Harry and Marv when he discovers their intentions.
Eventually, however, Kevin learns self- reliance and how to be brave. He goes shopping by himself (Keep in mind that this kid in the beginning of the movie was terrified at just the concept of packing his suitcase for the trip, claiming he’d never done it before), befriends the elderly neighbor who turns out to be a kindly yet misunderstood gentleman who has his own experience of feeling estranged from his family, and decides to defend his home from Harry and Marv (Who have by this point discovered that he is alone in the house) by setting up an impressive array of makeshift booby traps to fight them off.
Ultimately, of course, the burglars are defeated and brought to justice, Kevin is reunited with his mother and the rest of his family on Christmas morning, and the neighbor is reunited with his own family.
‘Home Alone’ does have some problems. First, right off the bat, the whole scenario involving how the family left Kevin behind seems a bit off. A) Even in the mad rush they were in to get to the flight in time, wouldn’t one of the other members of the family have noticed Kevin was missing sooner (i.e. Before they boarded the plane)? B) You’d think that the sound of everyone stampeding around the house in a rush to get ready and get out the door would have woken up Kevin. Another problem is that, while most of the traps seemed to work well at hurting the burglars or at least slowing them down, one of the traps Kevin sets simply involved hooking up a wire and a fan to blow a bunch of feathers into Harry’s face. Admittedly, it’s kind of funny to see, but it doesn’t hurt Harry or slow him down at all, you’d think a creative kid like Kevin could have come up with something a little stronger than that.
That being said, there’s a reason why ‘Home Alone’ did so well in the box office and remains a classic to this day. It really is a good movie. The plot hits all the right notes without becoming too corny.
Obviously, the main highlight of the film is when Kevin is using the booby traps to fight off Harry and Marv. Some of the traps are simple (i.e. Kevin pours a bucket of water on the steps leading up to his front door so it’ll freeze into a thin layer of ice and become ultra- slippery, then does the same to the stairs leading down to the basement door), others are slightly more complicated (i.e. the aforementioned fan/ feather trap), but all are a lot of fun to see in action. My personal favorite of the traps HAS to be when Kevin rigs up the back door with a small blowtorch that sets Harry’s head on fire when he tries to come in; between the very nature of the trap itself, and Joe Pesci’s awesome reaction to it, to this day I laugh hard at that scene. In addition to the traps, Kevin has also “Borrowed†a pellet gun from Buzz’s room that he puts to good use.
As far as acting goes, Macaulay Culkin does a quite good job as Kevin. You really can see through his performance how much Kevin has changed/ grown over the course of the film; From the helpless, rather bratty and selfish kid seen in the beginning, to the brave, self- reliant, and compassionate boy seen in the climax and ending. A good example of this is when he befriends the mysterious old neighbor. Meeting him at a Christmas Eve church service (The neighbor was there to see his granddaughter sing in the church’s youth choir, as that’s apparently the only chance he’d have to see her), they get to talking, and realize they have a lot in common, as they both know what it’s like to feel estranged from loved ones due to petty squabbles. Kevin reminds the man that he shouldn’t let fear and grudges keep him from reaching out to his family again, and points out that, although his brother and the rest of his family can annoy him at times, that doesn’t mean he loves them any less. The Kevin we saw at the beginning of the film wouldn’t have said anything like that, it shows the change he’s felt from his time home alone.
Catherine O’Hara turns in a wonderful supporting performance as Kevin’s mom. You can really sympathize with her in every scene she’s in; Between her impatience with Kevin and getting ready for the trip in the beginning of the film, through how increasingly stressed- out she is to get home to him throughout the rest of the movie while being thwarted at every turn by police and others who are either too incompetent or too apathetic to help her. You really want to see this poor, desperate woman reunite with her son, and when it finally happens in the very end of the movie, it’s worth all the trouble she went through.
Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern make for great villains as Harry and Marv. Between how mean and nasty they are in some scenes (Both at how callously they trash the houses they rob, and at how much they terrorize a freaking eight year old child) and how stupid and hilarious they are in other scenes, they’re always fun to watch and play off each other perfectly. The two of them sort of remind me of evil versions of Moe and Larry from the Three Stooges. They also have great screams of pain/ fear, especially Stern (The scream he gives when Kevin places Buzz’s pet tarantula on his face made me burst out laughing for quite a while).
Another highlight of ‘Home Alone’ that I never really noticed before or paid much attention to was the music. It has quite a good score. The most commonly used parts of it are the pretty and heartwarming Christmas-ey composition used as Kevin’s theme, and the more dark and ominous music used as the burglars’ theme. The movie offers some quite good variations on those two themes, to match the mood of each scene they’re used in. Another great use of music occurs late in the film; In the end of the aforementioned scene when Kevin befriends the old neighbor at the church service, he hears the church bells chiming the hour, reminding him that he needs to hustle home so he can set everything up before the burglars arrive. The music at that point transitions beautifully from the familiar ‘Carol of the Bells’ (Which the church’s youth choir was singing at the time) to the intense instrumental music for the scene when Kevin’s setting all the traps.
And so, there you have ‘Home Alone.’ Funny, moving, and generally a great film to watch with the family around Christmas. Come back later when I look at its sequel, ‘Home Alone 2.’
