History YMMV / HomeAlone1

** The police officer who goes to the [=McCallisters'=] home to check on Kevin simply makes a cursory evaluation of the house, declares it to be secure, and says that the family should count their kids again. But if one is tempted to call this officer an idiot for thinking that these parents had somehow miscounted their children, one should remember that the [=McCallisters=] actually ''did'' miscount- because they were in such a rush to leave and get to the airport in time, they couldn’t exactly round everyone up in a row to confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that everyone was there, leaving the job of counting the kids to their niece Heather. But while she ''was'' smart enough to have all the kids line up in front of the vans taking them to the airport, she was so hasty (just tapping on heads!) that she easily mistook Mitch Murphy (a nosy neighborhood kid drawn to the house by the commotion and rummaging through toys in one of the vans) for Kevin from behind.

** The police officer who goes to the [=McCallisters'=] home to check on Kevin simply makes a cursory evaluation of the house, declares it to be secure, and says that the family should count their kids again. But if one is tempted to call this officer an idiot for thinking that these parents had somehow miscounted their children, one should remember that the [=McCallisters=] actually ''did'' miscount- because they were in such a rush to leave and get to the airport in time, their head count was so cursory (just tapping on heads) that a nosy neighborhood kid named Mitch Murphy was mistaken for Kevin from behind because they didn’t have time to line everyone up and confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that everyone was there.

* InformedWrongness: It's debatable as to how wrong Uncle Frank was meant to be, but at the beginning of the first movie, him not letting Kevin watch a violent gangster movie is treated as another example as to why he's a [[EvilUncle terrible uncle]] even though Kevin later watches said movie and ends up getting the fright of his life. It can come off less like another example of Uncle Frank being a {{Jerkass}} and more him trying to prevent Kevin from being traumatized.

* RonTheDeathEater: Some viewers and critics paint Kevin as a budding sociopath for all the brutal traps he lays out for Harry and Marv, who are just nonviolent cat burglars. This conveniently glosses over how the duo is intentionally invading Kevin's house when they ''know'' he's in there alone and even taunt him with that knowledge when they show up at his door, so he's well within his rights to assume they mean him harm.

*** Another shock comes when you realize that not are Kate and Peter sustaining this level of furnishing while also supporting 5 children, but the entire first act of the film is about this huge family taking a Christmas vacation to ''Paris, France'' on a whim. Put all that together and you're left with something most people in UsefulNotes/TheNewTens would find incomprehensible. Your first assumption in watching this movie would be that the McAllisters are filthy rich instead of just upper middle class.

*** Let's not forget the fact that not are Kate and Peter sustaining this level of furnishing while also supporting 5 children, the entire first act of the film is about a Christmas vacation to ''Paris, France'' seemingly done on a whim. Put all that together and you're left with something most people in UsefulNotes/TheNewTens would find incomprehensible. Your first assumption in watching this movie would be that the McAllisters are filthy rich instead of just upper middle class.

** The police officer who goes to the [=McCallisters'=] home to check on Kevin simply makes a cursory evaluation of the house, declares it to be secure, and says that the family should count their kids again. But if one is tempted to call this officer an idiot for thinking that these parents had somehow miscounted their children, one should remember that the [=McCallisters=] actually ''did'' miscount- because they were in such a rush to leave and get to the airport in time, their head count was so cursory (just tapping on heads) that a neighborhood kid hanging around outside the house was mistaken for Kevin during the count because they didn’t have time to line everyone up and confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that everyone was there.

** The police officer who goes to the [=McCallisters'=] home to check on Kevin simply makes a cursory evaluation of the house, declares it to be secure, and says that the family should count their kids again. But if one is tempted to call this officer an idiot for thinking that these parents had somehow miscounted their children, one should remember that the [=McCallisters=] actually ''did'' do that when they were travelling to Paris.

** Harry and Marv, in the [=21st=] century, would've ''never'' discovered that Kevin was alone at the house; he'd already fooled them repeatedly into thinking that the house was still heavily occupied. The jig was only up when Kevin's father left a message about Kevin being home alone on a neighbor's answering machine -- and Marv, who was in the middle of robbing that same neighbor's house, overheard it while it was being recorded and told Harry, who realized the truth. Answering machines are all but gone today, in favor of private, electronic voicemail, and many homes no longer have landline phones anyway. While it's not an impossibility to have a landline phone anymore, one such as what Harry and Marv find would be unlikely.

** As they leave the house, Frank tells Peter "There's no way on Earth we're gonna make this plane. It leaves in 45 minutes!" before they get in the vans, located in Winnetka, a suburb of Chicago. Without traffic, it's a half-hour drive from 671 Lincoln Avenue (their home address) to O'Hare International Airport. Not only are Chicago's expressways known to be congested in both directions at rush hour, but the airport would be even ''more'' crowded because they were catching a flight close to Christmas -- one of the busiest times of the year for airports. In the [=21st=] century, even if the [=McCallisters=] got miraculously lucky and didn't hit any traffic, they would still have to go through a ''lot'' of time-consuming steps once they arrived: checking in, printing their boarding passes, waiting in the security line, clearing the security checkpoint, and then making their way through the terminal to their gate. Factoring in all of that, they would have missed their flight by almost two hours by the time they reached the gate. The film handwaves it away by saying the [=McCallisters=] just barely made it with moments to spare after running to the gate at a full sprint, but it's still a colossal stretch.
** In UsefulNotes/TheNewTens and The New Twenties, the sheer ''opulence'' of the [=McCallister=] household can stick out a bit. The family is presented as being upper-middle-class, with Kevin's dad being a while collar worker of some sort, but not a tycoon or anything (he has to use vans and consumer air travel, for a start). The [=McCallister=] home is absolutely enormous and filled with ''stuff'' (so as to work as a great movie set), though; in the [=70s=] and [=80s=], it still wasn't terribly uncommon for people with middle management-style jobs or other mid-tier white collar jobs to be able to afford something like that, especially with perhaps a little clever investing. In the new millennium, a home such as this would only possibly be believable as the home of the moneyed investor class (which would give the whole film a somewhat different read).

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: Many fans wished Mitch Murphy has more screen time, as it would been interesting to see Kevin's reaction to him being partially responsible for him being left behind, and Mitch teaming up with Kevin to take down Harry and Murphy.

* JustHereTheGodzilla: The traps are by far the most popular part of the film.

** The lax airport security of the Nineties is on full display. Kate is able to barter a plane ticket off of a fellow traveler in the terminal. That was a little questionable even then, but it's at least conceivable -- it was a holdover from still-earlier eras of air travel where the tickets were more like train or ship tickets. However, anybody who attempts something like that in an American airport in the [=21st=] century would probably be detained on suspicion of being a terrorist. Besides that, airline tickets are now entirely electronic, and they're nontransferable from one person to another in the first place. Also Kate's harsh attitude toward an airline clerk, while [[MamaBear understandable]], would probably get her thrown of the airport by security.

** The lax airport security of the Nineties is on full display. Kate is able to barter a plane ticket off of a fellow traveler in the terminal. That was a little questionable even then, but it's at least conceivable -- it was a holdover from still-earlier eras of air travel where the tickets were more like train or ship tickets. However, anybody who attempts something like that in an American airport in the [=21st=] century would probably be detained on suspicion of being a terrorist. Besides that, airline tickets are now entirely electronic, and they're nontransferable from one person to another in the first place.

** If the film were made and set in TheNewTens and beyond, Kevin's parents would, at worst, have to sort out some new SIM cards for their cell phones in order to give Kevin's own cell a call. They weren't able to call the house due to the ''land-based'' phone lines being down and the house having no wireless phones, which was, in 1990 (and as a holdover from UsefulNotes/TheEighties) a fairly typical arrangement, even for a well-off household like theirs[[note]The cell phones that did exist at the time were not as reliable[[/note]]. In the new millennium, even just before 9/11, Kevin would've been able to find a way to get his hands on a cell phone, and that would've opened up a number of additional solutions for his family to either get back home or get him to France with everyone.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: The first film relies almost completely on the realities of life in pre-[[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror 9/11]] America. Viewing it in the new millennium can be a bit of a time capsule, and reminder of how things used to be in ways the filmmakers could never have intended. This is the opposite of what was intended; Creator/ChrisColumbus has said that he and Creator/JohnHughes wanted for ''Home Alone'' to have a "timeless" look and feel to it so that years down the line, it could still be enjoyed by people without seeming "dated". Unfortunately, this wasn't the case, though it isn't their fault -- the kind of protocols and lifestyle changes which became common after 9/11 couldn't possibly have been predicted by the filmmarkers.
** If the film were made and set in TheNewTens and beyond, Kevin's parents would, at worst, have to sort out some new SIM cards for their cell phones in order to give Kevin's own cell a call. They weren't able to call the house due to the ''land-based'' phone lines being down and the house having no wireless phones, which was, in 1990 (and as a holdover from UsefulNotes/TheEighties) a fairly typical arrangement, even for a well-off household like theirs. In the new millennium, even just before 9/11, Kevin would've been able to find a way to get his hands on a cell phone, and that would've opened up a number of additional solutions for his family to either get back home or get him to France with everyone.

** The lax airport security of the Nineties is on full display. Kate is able to barter a plane ticket off of a fellow traveler in the terminal. That was a little questionable even then, but it's at least conceivable -- it was a holdover from still-earlier eras of air travel where the tickets were more like train or ship tickets. However, anybody who attempts something like that in an American airport in the [=21st=] century would probably be detained on suspicion of being a terrorist. Much more glaringly, there's the fact that the [=McCallisters=] would have ''never'' been able to get through [=21st=]-century airport security in time to make their flight in the first place, giving them ample time to discover that Kevin is missing and go back home to him, preventing the plot of the film from ever unfolding.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: The first film relies almost completely on the realities of life in pre-[[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror 9/11]] America. Viewing it in the new millennium can be a bit of a time capsule, and reminder of how things used to be in ways the filmmakers could never have intended.

** As they leave the house, Frank tells Peter "There's no way on Earth we're gonna make this plane. It leaves in 45 minutes!" before they get in the vans, located in Winnetka, a suburb of Chicago. Without traffic, it's a half-hour drive from 671 Lincoln Avenue (their home address) to O'Hare International Airport. Not only are Chicago's expressways known to be congested in both directions at rush hour, but the airport would be even ''more'' crowded because they were catching a flight close to Christmas -- one of the busiest times of the year for airports. In the [=21st=] century, even if the [=McCallisters=] got miraculously lucky and didn't hit any traffic, they would still have to go through a ''lot'' of time-consuming steps once they arrived: checking in, printing their boarding passes, waiting in the security line, clearing the security checkpoint, and then making their way through the terminal to their gate. Factoring in all of that, they would have missed their flight by almost two hours by the time they reached the gate. The film handwaves it away by saying they just ''barely'' made it with moments to spare after running to the gate at aa full sprint, but it's still a colossal stretch.

** The worst part of it all is that this is almost the opposite of what was intended; Creator/ChrisColumbus has said that he and Creator/JohnHughes wanted very much for ''Home Alone'' to have a "timeless" look and feel to it so that ten, fifteen, twenty, etc. years down the line, it could still be viewed and enjoyed by people and it not seem "dated". Unfortunately, this wasn't the case, though it isn't entirely their fault -- if nothing else, we were some way off from normalizing the kind of travel protocols which became common after 9/11.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece:
** The first film relies almost ''completely'' on the realities of life in pre-[[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror 9/11]] America. Viewing it in the new millennium can be a bit of a time capsule, and reminder of how things used to be in ways the filmmakers could never have intended.
*** If the film were made and set in TheNewTens and beyond, Kevin's parents would, at worst, have to sort out some new SIM cards for their cell phones in order to give Kevin's own cell a call. They weren't able to call the house due to the ''land-based'' phone lines being down and the house having no wireless phones, which was, in 1990 (and as a holdover from UsefulNotes/TheEighties) a fairly typical arrangement, even for a well-off household like theirs. In the new millennium, even just before 9/11, Kevin would've been able to find a way to get his hands on a cell phone, and that would've opened up a number of additional solutions for his family to either get back home or get him to France with everyone.
*** You can see a line of pay phones in the airport terminal (Kevin also uses one of them in ''Home Alone 2'').
*** Nowadays, there are alarm clocks that hold regular batteries that activate when a power outage cuts off the main electrical supply, and a lot of people use the alarms on their smartphones to wake themselves up -- so unless the backup battery of the alarm clock failed and wasn't replaced, or the person in question accidentally put the phone in sleep mode/forgot to charge it, a power outage wouldn't prevent Kevin and his family from waking up on time and going to the airport without incident. Ironically, the alarm clock in the movie actually ''does'' have a battery backup, as is advertised on the top edge of said radio -- meaning his parents either forgot to replace them, or never put them in at all.
*** Harry and Marv, in the [=21st=] century, would've ''never'' discovered that Kevin was alone at the house; he'd already fooled them repeatedly into thinking that the house was still heavily occupied. The jig was only up when Kevin's father left a message about Kevin being home alone on a neighbor's answering machine -- and Marv, who was in the middle of robbing that same neighbor's house, overheard it while it was being recorded and told Harry, who realized the truth. Answering machines are all but gone today, in favor of private, electronic voicemail, and many homes no longer have landline phones anyway.[[note]]Although in that type of affluent neighborhood, some still do.[[/note]]
*** On top of that, the lax airport security of the time is on full display as well. Kate is able to barter a plane ticket off of a fellow traveler ''right in the terminal''; that was still a little questionable even then, but at least ''conceivable'' (and was a holdover from still earlier eras of air travel where the tickets were more like train or ship tickets). However, anybody who attempts something like that in an American airport in the [=21st=] century would probably be detained on suspicion of being a terrorist. Much more glaringly, there's the fact that the [=McCallisters=] would have ''never'' been able to get through [=21st=]-century airport security in time to make their flight in the first place, giving them ample time to discover that Kevin is missing and go back home to him, preventing the plot of the film from ever unfolding.
*** As noted, we have Frank tell Peter, "There's no way on Earth we're gonna make this plane. It leaves in 45 minutes!" before they get in the vans at their house, located in Winnetka, a suburb of Chicago. Without traffic, it's a half-hour drive from 671 Lincoln Avenue (their home address) to O'Hare International Airport. Not only are Chicago's expressways known to be ''very'' congested in both directions at rush hour due to the city's reverse-commute nature, but the airport would be even ''more'' crowded because they were catching a flight close to ''Christmas'' -- one of the busiest, if not ''the'' busiest, times of year for airports. In the [=21st=] century, even if the [=McCallisters=] somehow ''didn't'' hit any traffic and reached the airport in that time, they would still have to go through a ''lot'' of time-consuming steps once they arrived: checking in, printing their boarding passes, waiting in the security line, clearing the security checkpoint, and then making their way through Terminal 3 to their gate.[[note]]American Airlines is based out of Terminal 3, along with Delta Airlines[[/note]] Factoring in all of that, they would have missed their flight by almost ''two hours'' by the time they reached the gate. There is a reason why the airlines generally recommend that you arrive at the airport a full ''90 minutes'' before your flight (and even ''earlier'' for international flights). In the [=80s=], though, it was conceivable, if rather frowned on, for a person to show up to the airport with fifteen minutes to go 'till their flight and make it work, and many people would've had an experience somewhat like that at some point.
*** For that matter, in UsefulNotes/TheNewTens and The New Twenties, the sheer ''opulence'' of the [=McCallister=] household can stick out a bit. The family is presented as being upper-middle-class, with Kevin's dad being a while collar worker of some sort, but not a tycoon or anything (he has to use vans and consumer air travel, for a start). The [=McCallister=] home is absolutely enormous and filled with ''stuff'' (so as to work as a great movie set), though; in the [=70s=] and [=80s=], it still wasn't terribly uncommon for people with middle management-style jobs or other mid-tier white collar jobs to be able to afford something like that, especially with perhaps a little clever investing. In the new millennium, a home such as this would only possibly be believable as the home of the moneyed investor class (which would give the whole film a somewhat different read).
*** The worst part of it all is that this is almost the opposite of what was intended; Creator/ChrisColumbus has said that he and Creator/JohnHughes wanted very much for ''Home Alone'' to have a "timeless" look and feel to it so that ten, fifteen, twenty, etc. years down the line, it could still be viewed and enjoyed by people and it not seem "dated". Unfortunately, this wasn't the case, though it isn't entirely their fault -- if nothing else, we were some way off from normalizing the kind of travel protocols which became common after 9/11.

* IdiotPlot: Everything happens because Heather miscounted heads, rather than doing a roll call of all her siblings and cousins, that Mitch Murphy goes completely unnoticed when he rifles through their things before wishing them goodbye, and that Kevin is so heavy a sleeper that he missed the hustle and bustle. Lampshaded by Kate when she asks, "What kind of a mother am I?" about forgetting her youngest son. She also could have rented a car the minute she was on American soil to drive home, the way she does later. Meanwhile, Kevin assumes his family didn't rent taxis and vanished into thin air, rather than [[OccamsRazor realizing they left him at home]].

* RonTheDeathEater: Some viewers and critics paint Kevin as a budding sociopath for all the brutal traps he lays out for Harry and Marv, who are just nonviolent cat burglars. This conveniently glosses over how the duo is intentionally invading Kevin's house when they ''know'' he's in there alone, so he's not really on the hook for assuming they posed a serious threat to him.

''YMMV/HomeAlone1'' | ''YMMV/HomeAlone2LostInNewYork'' | ''YMMV/HomeAlone3'' | ''YMMV/HomeAlone4TakingBackTheHouse'' | ''YMMV/HomeAloneTheHolidayHeist'' | ''YMMV/HomeSweetHomeAlone''-]]]]]

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation:
** If you're a parent, Kate harassing the airport employees and patrons in the first film (not so much the hotel employees in the second, as they actively antagonized Kevin) is acceptable because she just wants to get home to her son. If you work with the public, she's an asshole, with or without [[FreudianExcuse a vulnerable kid stuck at home]].

* BrieferThanTheyThink: It can be a real surprise for people to discover that there really isn't a whole lot of HomeAloneAntics. They're pretty much entirely confined to the climax, which is about fifteen minutes long. It's certainly not a short scene, but from the way people remember it, you'd think pranking the bandits was the entire plot, or at least that there were pranks occurring throughout the film. (This is likely due to the sequels, along with countless rip-offs, using that structure instead.)

* RonTheDeathEater: Some viewers and critics paint Kevin as a budding sociopath for all the brutal traps he lays out for Harry and Marv, who are just nonviolent cat burglars. This conveniently glosses over how the duo is intentionally invading Kevin's house when they ''know'' he's in there alone, so he's not really on the hook for assuming they were looking to do him harm.

* StrawmanHasAPoint: Mr. Hector disadvising Kate for looking for Kevin by herself. While he's just as sleazy as he was towards Kevin, he's right in that it wouldn't be a good idea for a wealthy woman unfamiliar with the city to wander the streets of New York alone at night. The film doesn't treat it as such and he gets slapped by her.

* ContestedSequel: Is it an EvenBetterSequel that's more action-packed, dramatic, and gives more focus to the Wet Bandits and the booby traps more focus? Or an inferior follow-up that follows the original too much, only changing the setting?

MoralEventHorizon: Harry and Marv in intend to steal money from a [[UnacceptableTarget kid's charity]] and later try to shoot Kevin when they capture him, as well as the Pigeon Lady when she intervenes.

*** The worst part of it all is that this is almost the opposite of what was intended; Creator/ChrisColumbus has said that he and Creator/JohnHughes wanted very much for ''Home Alone'' to have a "timeless" look and feel to it so that ten, fifteen, twenty, etc. years down the line, it could still be viewed and enjoyed by people and it not seem "dated". Unfortunately, this wasn't the case, though it isn't entirely their fault -- if nothing else, we were some way off from normalizing the kind of travel protocols which became common after 9/11.