Home Alone (1990)

It's almost impossible to go wrong with a John Hughes movie. Whether he was involved as a writer, a director, or a producer, Hughes was behind some of the best comedies of the 1980s. But while he is most often associated with his "Brat Pack" movies, he also brought us great flicks like Mr. Mom, National Lampoon's Vacation and Christmas Vacation, Uncle Buck, and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. He also wrote the movie we're here to discuss right now, Home Alone. A Christmas movie of a different sort, Home Alone hit theaters during the fall of 1990 and was the number-one movie in America for twelve weeks in a row. No kidding.

It was so popular that it remained in theaters until the end of June 1991, and I'm told that it was even recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the highest-grossing comedy of all time. Though the critical reaction was decidedly mixed, Home Alone has remained a perennial favorite for people who were kids when it was first released. So let's dig in and see what made Home Alone so popular.

It's nearly Christmas in suburban Chicago, where the entire McCallister family has gathered as they get ready to spend the holiday in Paris. Things are chaotic thanks to everyone's last-minute preparations for the trip, and it's left eight-year-old Kevin (Macauley Culkin) in the proverbial dust. But his siblings and cousins do manage to find the time to relentlessly pick on him, and even his jackass uncle gets in on the act. But the worst offender is his big brother, Buzz (Devin Ratray). Kevin eventually starts a fight with Buzz after taking all the teasing he could stand, and a huge mess results from it.

Kevin's luck is so awful that his mother, Kate (Catherine O'Hara), places all of the blame for the mess directly on him. So he's sent directly to his bunk in the house's attic without supper. The kid stands up for himself and gets punished, and his douchebag brother gets away with it all? Weak! Kevin feels the same way I do, and makes a point of announcing his wish that his family would simply disappear. Those words may come back to haunt him, I just know it.

A power outage during the night causes the McCallisters to oversleep, leaving them rushing to the airport with no time to spare. And in their hurry, they accidentally leave a sleeping Kevin behind at the house, not realizing their mistake until they're well over the Atlantic Ocean. But as his family departs for Paris, Kevin awakens to discover his house empty and is elated that his wish has apparently come true. He uses his newfound freedom to do all the things he'd ever wanted to do, like eating more junk food than any one person should consume at one time, riding his sled down the stairs and out the front door, watching R-rated gangster movies, sneaking peeks at back issues of Playboy, setting off firecrackers in the house, and shooting stuff with a BB gun.

But the problem is that pretty much everyone on the block have gone on extended Christmas vacations too. These empty houses have been targeted by the "Wet Bandits," Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern). A pair of unbelievably stupid burglars who earned their name by flooding every house they rob, the Wet Bandits see the McCallister house as the biggest present under the tree.

Though their initial attempts to rob the house are thwarted when Kevin fools them into thinking the house is full of people, each failure makes them more determined. But they soon realize that he's actually home alone, and decide to make one more big effort to clean the place out. Kevin overhears their plans and decides that they won't get through without a fight. And to make sure the Wet Bandits don't succeed, he's set up a series of booby traps throughout the house designed to make them reconsider their life of crime.

In retrospect, I'm not sure Home Alone is so much a Christmas movie as it is a simple "kid power" comedy. The movie takes place during Christmas, and there are Christmas songs on the soundtrack, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's specifically a Christmas movie. It could have taken place in August, with the McCallisters taking a summer vacation, and there wouldn't have been too huge a difference. It probably would have eliminated Christmas tree ornaments and ice as elements of Kevin's booby traps, but other than that, Home Alone could have been set during just about any time of year. It's kinda like how Die Hard and Gremlins are set during Christmas, yet aren't defined by the holiday. But even though the Christmas season might not be entirely necessary to the plot, it does put it to excellent use.

But either way, Home Alone has managed to have an enduring popularity since it hit theaters nearly twenty years ago. I can't go a month without seeing it or Home Alone 2 pop up on any random cable channel. It's a flawed yet charming movie, though it will appeal always more to kids than adults. It's almost like a live-action Tom and Jerry cartoon, only with the cat and mouse replaced by two stupid burglars and a kid.

And it's that sort of thing that makes you watch the movie as an adult a lot differently than you would as a kid. It's a lot like what I said in my review of The Wizard, since the inherent cynicism caused by adulthood makes you view things from other angles. As a kid, you'd be entertained by Kevin's wacky adventures and cheer as the Wet Bandits get their comeuppance. But watching it as an adult, you start noticing that nearly all of Kevin's booby traps would have put Harry and Marv in the hospital. And if the movie took place in real life, Kevin probably wouldn't have been so successful. Kevin would have more than likely peed himself out of fear, and the Wet Bandits would have probably shot him and ransacked the house. It's either that, or they'd have given up because the booby traps would have left them in too much pain to move. Of course, that would be if they weren't the two most incompetent thieves ever.

Then you start noticing that Kevin's family — his parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, whoever — are neglectful of him, are irritatingly obnoxious jackasses, or they generally treat him like crap until they realize they've left him back in Chicago. And even then, the only one who's really worried about Kevin is his mom. Everyone else just seems kinda upset that their trip to Paris has been ruined. I know the kid is kind of a brat at first, but he doesn't really deserve to be treated like that.

And on that note, I can't say I'm surprised that Kevin hates his family. I'd hate them too. Everyone treats him like he's subhuman, and even an adult calls him a jerk to his face right in front of his mother. Kate doesn't say anything to him or even give him so much as a dirty look, almost like she was okay with it. And then she goes and punishes Kevin for daring to stand up to somebody that was bullying him, when the only real harm was that a glass of milk got knocked over. Yeah, that's great parenting. Even if Kevin is a little on the annoying side, he didn't do anything worthy of more than a slap on the wrist. And if it were my child that the uncle was talking to like that, I'd have ripped that uncle's head off with my bare hands and stuck it on a pike in the front yard as a warning for people who'd even think about being mean to my kids.

But I guess I should get back to my usual routine, or else I'll end up be breaking down the movie's more disconcerting aspects all day. So let's begin where I usually do, with the direction. Handling those duties is Chris Columbus, who hadn't really made a name for himself as a director yet. He'd produced The Goonies and Gremlins, but at this point, all Columbus had directed was Adventures in Babysitting and Heartbreak Hotel, neither of which were really set the world on fire. Home Alone was Columbus's third movie and first substantial hit, and he makes the best of it.

Columbus could have taken the easy way out and done things simplistically, but he goes out of his way to class the movie up a bit. He does a great job of capturing that warm yuletide feeling, much of which comes thanks to Julio Macat's wonderful cinematography and John Williams's amazing Oscar-nominated music. The movie has a particular ambiance that nicely replicates the feeling of Christmas, which went a long way in establishing the proper atmosphere. However, Hughes's direction isn't perfect. Specifically, the scenes at the beginning where the family is rushing to get ready feel like a forced, almost artificial replication of the hectic nature of the holiday. But other than that, Hughes's work is well done.

The movie's biggest name behind the scenes was its writer, the late John Hughes. While Hughes was always known as a purveyor of teen-targeted humor during the '80s, his first movie of the '90s was a pretty darn good kids' movie. When you're not thinking about what terrible people Kevin's family are or the fact that the Wet Bandits would be in intense amounts of pain in real life, Hughes has written a movie that kids can really get behind. I'm sure every child has thought about having free reign of the house and effortlessly beating up would-be criminals, so as pure escapist fantasy for its target audience, I can't fault it a bit. Hughes's script does run the risk of becoming overly sappy and sentimental, especially with the storyline where Kevin convinces a misunderstood neighbor to try reconnecting with his estranged family. But he manages to rein it in once the movie hits its stride, and he turns in some rather well done work.

Last up is the cast, the majority of which don't really get the chance to shine. Pretty much every supporting actor playing the members of the McCallister family is stuck playing an annoying idiot, and some of their performances are awfully wooden. (And is it just me, or does Devin Ratray — the actor playing Kevin's brother Buzz — look an awful lot like that evil marionette from Pee-Wee's Playhouse?) I will give credit where credit is due, though, and say that Catherine O'Hara does turn in a rather likable performance that improves as the movie goes on.

But to be honest, nobody is watching Home Alone for the supporting cast. Everyone's focus is squarely on the movie's three primary actors. In the lead role is Macauley Culkin, who became one of the biggest child stars ever thanks to this movie. His career pretty much petered out by 1994, thanks to a string of really bad movies, but it was Home Alone that put him on top of the world. Culkin is actually quite charming and believable, and he's obviously having a heck of a time working on the movie. Yeah, he does come across as being a little annoying at times, but the fun he's having is contagious.

Meanwhile, Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern are pretty darn entertaining as our antagonists du jour. You can't help but laugh as these two morons keep stumbling through each of Kevin's booby traps, like they just can't put together that stepping on nails, getting burned with a blowtorch, and being smacked in the face with paint cans is not good for them. It's almost like a Wile E. Coyote cartoon; sooner or later, you want to see them overcome all that punishment and catch the kid just to see what would happen. Pesci and Stern are a hoot to watch, though, so I can't complain about their performances.

A lot of people have pointed out over the years that Home Alone was the last truly good John Hughes movie, and I'm forced to agree. You don't really hear people including Flubber or Baby's Day Out in lists of his best work, do you? But as goofy and as implausible and as downright silly as Home Alone is, it's still an entertaining ride. I know there's a lot of other critics out there who'll probably look down on the movie as just another dumb kids' flick and shine a more negative light on it. But you know what? I'm not going to do that. Is Home Alone perfect? No. But it's a heck of a lot of fun if you let it be. So I'll give it three and a half stars and a thumbs-up. Now if only they hadn't followed it up with those three lame sequels...

Final Rating: ***½