“Home Alone” Review
Macaulay Culkin stars in “Home Alone” as Kevin McCallister, a young boy who finds himself on his own, fending off burglars from his home in the film that has become a must-watch Christmas film.
It’s weird the films that we deem to be Christmas classics. Frankly, some of the films we watch every year have some screwy interpretations of the holiday whether it’s Jimmy Stewart contemplating suicide in “It’s A Wonderful Life,” Ebenezer Scrooge being threatened with death into being a nice philanthropist in “A Christmas Carol” or young Ralphie Parker wanting a gun for Christmas so he can fulfill his fantasies of killing people in “A Christmas Story.” While these summaries are obviously skewed towards my darker inclinations, it’s still strange what we watch around Christmas. Many of these films, for all their strange moments of havoc and mayhem, still manage to tap into the deeper meaning of the holiday and one of the best examples of this is “Home Alone.”
Set in a suburb of Chicago, Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) and his family are preparing to go to Paris for Christmas. Kevin feels like the runt of the group, being picked on by all of his older siblings and feeling like no one is taking his side. After almost missing the flight and leaving the house in a hurry, the McCallisters make it to Paris. However, they forgot Kevin who’s now home alone for the holidays. Desperate to get back home to her son, Kevin’s mother (Catherine O’Hara) goes from flight to flight to get to Chicago. Meanwhile, Kevin finds himself not only the man of the house, but also its protector as he must fend off two burglars, Harry and Marv (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern), who want to break into Kevin’s house and steal all of the family’s possessions.
I’m a firm believer in Quentin Tarantino’s notion that the 1980s were a terrible time for American films after the studios took over and essentially stamped out the rambunctious New Hollywood of the 1970s. However, films geared towards children and teenagers certainly had their day and one of the biggest voices for those stories was writer/director John Hughes who, apparently, wrote the first draft of “Home Alone’s” screenplay in nine days.
Like a lot of John Hughes films, there’s a pathos injected into what would normally be considered a silly, throw-away comedy. For all their great comedy, films like “The Breakfast Club,” “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “Uncle Buck” have their dramatic moments that feel genuine and make for a more meaningful story. Beneath the silly slapstick, “Home Alone” is a deeply moving story about family love.
At the heart of it is Macaulay Culkin, who delivers a fantastic performance as this vulnerable kid who gets a taste of adulthood. When he’s left at home, Kevin has to confront some of his fears with some, like his fear of the basement, being typical for kids. However, there’s some more challenging fears that he has to acknowledge and not just the burglars that are wanting to get inside of his home. The fact that his family is gone and he’s alone is something that the film handles quite well. After remembering how mean they were to him, Kevin is having the time of his life jumping on the bed, eating junk food and watching movies he’s not allowed to watch. But gradually reality sets in and he realizes that he needs his family.
The church sequence involving Roberts Blossom and Macaulay Culkin is one of the best conversations that John Hughes has ever written in his prestigious career.
While Kevin is alone, he does connect with someone that he never expected to. Marley (Roberts Blossom) is an elderly neighbor of Kevin’s who salts the sidewalks for the block. However, Kevin is scared of him because his older brother Buzz (Devin Ratrey) told him that Marley is a serial killer who uses a snow shovel as his chief weapon. To be fair, the scenes where Marley is depicted from Kevin’s point of view do make him out to be a frightening presence.
All of that changes in my favorite scene in the film. After learning that Harry and Marv plan to break into his house on Christmas Eve, Kevin goes to a Christmas Eve church service where Marley is in attendance. Marley approaches Kevin’s pew and politely asks to sit with him. Kevin says yes and Marley beats him to death with a snow shovel while an angelic choir sings in the background.
Okay, that’s not what happens. Instead, Marley lets Kevin know that all the stories about him aren’t true. They then have a conversation where Kevin opens up about how he does like his family while Marley tells Kevin that he hasn’t talked to his own son in years which has drastically affected the relationship he has with his granddaughter. Kevin tells Marley that he should try to make amends and then Kevin goes home to defend his home from the Wet Bandits, so named because they leave the water running in all the homes they hit (because it’s bad enough that you’re robbing them, why not also screw them with the water bill).
What makes this scene so touching is how real it feels. While Kevin learns his own lesson and dispenses some wisdom to Marley, he still talks like a kid. He compares Marley’s fear of talking to his son to his own fear of the basement and how he got over it by facing it head on. It feels completely genuine and really shows off Culkin’s acting chops unlike later films he’d star in, which felt more gimmicky.
It’s strange because, when I was a kid, my favorite scenes of “Home Alone” were the slapstick scenes where the bandits find themselves in a bunch of booby-traps laid out by Kevin in the film’s third act. But I never found myself growing restless, waiting for Harry’s head to be lit on fire or for Marv to step on a nail. I liked the dramatic scenes of “Home Alone” even then and I love them now.
With that said, the showdown between the Wet Bandits and Kevin is fantastic with the ingenious traps being so funny. How can you not laugh at these likably mean criminals getting the shit kicked out of them? Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern really bring a lot of personality to their roles and create a familiar yet endearing dynamic we’ve all seen: the wise guy and the simpleton. However, there’s a reason why we see this dynamic over and over. When it’s done right, like in “Home Alone,” it’s spectacularly hilarious.
Part of me would give anything to see a deep-fake video where Harry is replaced with Joe Pesci’s psychotic, Oscar-winning character Tommy DeVito from “Goodfellas.” Let’s just say that the film would definitely be rated R and there wouldn’t be a sequel.
What’s remarkable about the bandits is that, even though they really have their moment in the third act, Harry and Marv never feel tacked on. They’re likably goofy and you never feel that they’re taking away from Kevin’s story.
Marv and Harry are entertainingly threatening as the Wet Bandits who find themselves being tormented by Kevin’s traps as they try to steal the possessions of the McCallister family.
But not all of the action is in Chicago. Immediately after figuring out that Kevin has been forgotten, his mother does everything she can to get back home. She sells her jewelry, she begs, she even hitches with a polka band led by the always heartwarming John Candy.
Over the years, O’Hara’s performance has really grown on me. I love her dedication to Kevin and how, even though she’s made the horrible mistake of forgetting him and not exactly leaving him with friendly words, she owns up to it. Many of the characters O’Hara has played through the years have been very kooky but also are very heartfelt and that’s especially apparent in this film.
Along with John Hughes' great writing, the direction of Chris Columbus really is what makes this film so charming and endlessly rewatchable around Christmas. Columbus, who would later go on to make “Mrs. Doubtfire” and the first two “Harry Potter” films, clearly knows how to elicit great performances from child actors and how to create the warm atmosphere needed for a family film with an adult edge.
Everything about this film just screams Christmas from the music by John Williams to the warm lighting to the production design which used Christmas colors In everything. If you rewatch “Home Alone,” you’ll see a lot of green and red and it perfectly elicits those warm Yuletide feelings. Unlike a Hallmark film, which has Christmas decorations and colors obnoxiously forced on you in a hokey manner, “Home Alone” is more subtle with a lot of the colors being on the walls or household furniture. It’s a gorgeous looking film that you could play on mute and still get satisfaction from it.
You also have to admire the effort that was put into the little details that could have been throwaway assignments for the crew. One scenario involves Kevin watching a violent film that’s supposed to scare him and make him miss his family. Okay, so did the filmmakers make a cheap looking horror film or some kind of over-the-top war story? No. Instead they made the greatest fictional movie of all time: “Angels With Filthy Souls.”
An obvious parody of pre-Code 1930s Gangster films, this fake movie stars Ralph Foody as the sadistic Johnny who shoots his partner Snakes (Michael Guido) dead with a Tommy Gun while laughing like a mad man. Why do I mention a film that's only brought up a couple of times as a joke? Because it’s been over 15 years since I’ve first seen “Home Alone” and I pray to God every day that, one day, “Angels With Filthy Souls” can actually exist. I would love a double feature of “Home Alone” with that movie. “Die Hard” can’t be the only Christmas movie where people get murdered. I would do unspeakable things to get a full version of this non-existent film. I would violate the Geneva Convention. Maybe that’s a testament to how good “Home Alone” is. We love it so much that we wish elements of that were real.
But if there’s one thing about “Home Alone” that everyone can agree is perfect aside from the characters, the pacing, the atmosphere and the psychotic traps, it’s the ending. Everything about that ending is so miraculous. Instead of Kevin waking up on Christmas morning, having defeated the bandits the night before, and finding his entire family, he’s alone. He looks around and sees that the house is empty. Then his mother is dropped off by the polka band and walks in but there’s not an immediate reconciliation between her and Kevin, she has to apologize which she does and they hug. Then the entire family comes in having taken a flight to Chicago that Kevin’s mother didn’t want to wait for. Then, when you think that everything’s all tied up, you see the most heartwarming things that will make you cry. That’s not a figure-of-speech either, that’s a fact. Seeing Marley reunited with his son and granddaughter and then Marley giving Kevin a little thank you wave makes me tear up every time and cements the legacy of “Home Alone” as one of the greatest Christmas stories of all time.
For all of its slapstick and goofy hijinks, “Home Alone” is a surprisingly wholesome film that has become such a staple of the holiday. I’d say that you should watch it but you’re probably going to anyway.
