Line #80 Headscratchers/HomeAlone


1	[[index]]
2	* ''Headscratchers/HomeAlone1''
3	* ''Headscratchers/HomeAlone2LostInNewYork''
4	* ''Headscratchers/HomeAlone3''
5	* ''Headscratchers/HomeAlone4TakingBackTheHouse''
6	[[/index]]
7
8	[[foldercontrol]]
9
10	[[AC: Multiple]]
11
12	[[folder:Christmas setting]]
13	* Why do all of the movies take place around Christmastime? Isn't that redundant?
14	** Because the first one did, and was a colossal hit. Why mess with a winning formula?
15	** I'm sure Kevin's thinking, "[[Film/DieHard2 I can't believe this. Another city, another booby-trapped residence. How can the same shit happen to the same kid twice]]?"
16	** In the first movie the Christmas setting accomplishes multiple things; a) it explains why the entire family is together; b) it explains why they're all going on a holiday, thus getting them all out of the country and unable to check up on Kevin, and finally; c) it explains why Kate has such a hard time getting a flight back to Chicago since most flights will have been booked full at that time of year. For the other movies, I'll refer you back to the earlier comment: Why mess with a winning formula?
17	** The setting also allows for Christmas-themed traps, both from the ornaments and gifts, and also from the weather itself. In the second movie, it being Christmas Eve allowed the thieves to think they could hit a really big score at Duncan's Toy Chest.
18	** Home Alone 3 doesn't take place around Christmas.
19	** While Christmas isn't directly mentioned, the large amounts of Christmas decorations seen in the film do imply that it takes place just before or just after. Best guess is just before, as the father was travelling on a business trip and there aren't a great deal of those in the week between Christmas and the New Year.
20	*** They date dropped in Home Alone 3 when they interview the cab driver. "You had a fare from the airport around 1620 hours, January 8. Senior citizen, female, Caucasian." Home Alone 3 confirmed itself as taking place in early-to mid January.
21	[[/folder]]
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23
24	[[folder:Allowing Frank to stay in the house]]
25	* Why, oh, why do Kate and Peter still allow Frank inside their house? He's probably the grouchiest, [[TheCynic most cynical]], [[TheScrooge selfish]] member of the [=McCallister=] family, not to mention the way he treats them.
26	** If there's a trope for "we put up with his crap because he's family," it applies here.
27	** Christmas can be a very stressful holiday season. Being together for several days with so many people without a break possibly amplified his behaviour. It is quite possible that he is grumpy and cynical by nature but still quite a bit nicer for the rest of the year.
28	[[/folder]]
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30	[[folder:Ignorance of bullying]]
31	* ''Home Alone 4''. What kind of parent completely disregards the fact that their youngest is being bullied and picked on by his older siblings and acts as if it's HIS fault? Many kids who deal with this wish they were only children, but I still don't think that the line, "Well, maybe you should go to your room and think about what you do have," in regards to the boy's unhappiness should have been in a supposedly family friendly movie. His mother should really start thinking about social worker visits.
32	** Sadly, this is often TruthInTelevision. When my mom and I watched this when I was kid, I felt sorry for Kevin. She felt he was being a brat who got what he deserved. I'm an only child, but when I was little, my cousins were often around. They could verbally abuse me, take control of all the toys, and once, even hit me hard enough to leave a bruise; they never got in trouble. Whenever I fought back in any way, I did get in trouble. And then my mother wondered why she had to hear about all the years of bullying I suffered in school from some classmates of mine in the grocery store instead of her own daughter...
33	*** You should have handled it the way Legendary Temple Basketball Coach John Chaney did. Wood Shop. Mallet. Bully's head. He didn't connect on #3, but traded 5 days of suspension for the bully never bothering him ever again.
34	** I haven't seen 3 or 4, but at least in the first movie, Kevin ''was'' being a brat who got what he deserved. I don't really blame him, since for a 9-year-old, being assigned to sleep with the bed-wetter and not getting the right kind of pizza are tragedies of the highest order, and well, first world issues. However, it's hard to blame Kate for her actions either: she sent Kevin to bed early after he started a food fight (pretty standard punishment), and when he complained about sharing a bed with Fuller, she promised to take care of it (which she did).
35	*** At least in the second movie, Kevin's complaints were justified. Buzz was picking on him unprovoked and conned the family with a fake apology. In fact, I haven't seen the second movie in a while, but it borders on KarmaHoudini.
36	*** IMHO, he was pretty justified in the first movie to feel put upon as well. He pushed Buzz into the counter and knocked over a couple of glasses and everyone else caused havoc when they flailed around getting up, knocking more stuff over, to see what was happening, which they blamed on Kevin. I always thought they were pretty terrible parents.
37	*** Kevin was being a bit of a brat in the first film, yes, but he had also discovered that there wasn't any plain cheese pizza left and Buzz, who had eaten at least some of it, was taunting him over the fact. Kevin definitely reacted inappropriately, but he might not have gone so far without Buzz provoking him in the first place.
38	[[/folder]]
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40	[[folder:Why don't the crazy thieves give up?]]
41	* Why are the thieves who try to rob the [=McCallisters=]/Pruitts so determined to continue even after they fall for some very dangerous traps? It's not like they're after any specific valuable that's in their house. Any burglar in real life with the least bit of common sense would have given up trying to rob a house knowing somebody was there at all or at the very least after falling for some traps and would decide to maybe find a different house to rob. But for some strange reason, these bandits keep trying to rob one house while knowing someone is home and after getting injured by some traps that could kill them, and they just injure themselves even more each time. What's up with that?
42	** You have to remember that the thieves are cartoonish villains who can endure traps which as you say could easily kill people in real life, so their sense of self preservation is diminished for the sake of the movie. Also, along with trying to rob the houses for their loot (or the missile chip in the third movie) they also want revenge on the little kid who is injuring and embarrassing them so badly. What's more, he also made them which they know about (whether because he turned an RC car into an observation drone, took photos of them robbing the biggest toy store in America, or they just had a hunch which he confirmed by trying to fool them with a tape then priming his house for self defence) and the presence of a witness is usually of big concern to criminals. Finally, in the case of the third film, they were literally threatened with ''death'' by the North Korean terrorist they were contracted by if they couldn't retrieve the chip, so no amount of injuries could dissuade them from continuing to try and in the end they probably preferred to end up in the relative safety of prison and custody of law enforcement rather than assassinated for failing the mission.
43	** I think the "cartoonish villains" part is key. These guys have a superhuman soak, loosely akin to characters like Wile E. Coyote, if not as powerful. They simply aren't in nearly as much danger as a human from our universe would be. So they really have no reason to stop. Some of their injuries don't even seem to affect them minutes later. It may well be that if they had won, they could have simply slept off all those injuries, and become rich for enduring what, to them, are painful but very temporary inconveniences. To go back to the Wile E. Coyote reference, why not keep hunting Road Runner, when he's delicious, and you completely heal from catastrophic injuries in one quick fade-to-black?
44	** Maybe the SunkCostFallacy? If they give up without robbing the house, all their suffering will be for naught. Relatedly: they might figure if Kevin is going to so much trouble to guard the house, there must be something '''really''' valuable in there.
45	[[/folder]]
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47	[[folder:Age]]
48	* In the first movie Kevin's 8 and in the second movie he's 10, meaning it's two years after the first. So why is everyone referring to the events of the first film as ''last year''?
49	** This might actually be FridgeBrilliance, [[InsaneTrollLogic Kevin may have been born on February 29th and his parents may only celebrate his birthday every two years as a compromise.]]
50	** That may have been a last minute script change, or an oversight.
51	** It does work if the first movie was just before his birthday, and the second just after.
52	** It ''is'' the same general time of the year, but if Kevin's birthday was on a fixed calendrical date after the family left the first year and before they left in the second movie, it works.
53	** The only evidence we have of his age in the second film is his word; Kevin may have altered it himself, for whatever reason.
54	** In the novelization of the second film the family is leaving after Kevin's birthday (the Talkboy was a gift from his grandmother) and talks about the previous year's mishap where it's explicitly stated they left ''before'' his birthday.
55	[[/folder]]
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57	[[folder:What happened to the dog's things?]]
58	* Kate mentions that their dog is in the kennel. Where is the rest of the dog's things (toys, etc)? They wouldn't have brought it all to the kennel. Also, it's never mentioned in the second film.
59	** Some families keep all their dog's toys in a basket when the dog's not using them (so no one trips on them), and train the dog to just get them out of the basket if they want anything. If the dog's not there, they may have put the basket in a closet or something.
60	** Given how crowded the house was with guests, and the possibility one of those guests might have been allergic or just didn't like dogs, they might've exiled the family pet to the backyard for the few days prior to their flight. Putting its toys outside with it would help lessen the sting of being evicted.
61	** They could also put the dog in a kennel because most flights don't allow dogs.
62	*** Actually, given how many relatives they had to deal with, they probably had an unusual attack of practicality and put the dog into kennels a day or two before they left to make preparations smoother. Flying to France with a largish dog is not terribly easy at the best of times.
63	*** If you listen carefully when Kevin's mom is talking on the phone at the very beginning of the movie, she does mention that they put the dog in a kennel.
64	[[/folder]]
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66	[[folder: Nobody just happened to wake up?]]
67	* In both films there are like 15 people going on a trip and both times everybody oversleeps because Kevin's parents fail to get up on time for various reasons (the power outage in the first film, accidentally unplugging the clock in the 2nd film). Are we supposed to believe that with the law of averages that on two separate occasions 15 people all slept in and not one person got up to go to the bathroom or just happened to wake up by chance? Nobody got up around sunrise and noticed it was light out and thought to check the time? There were a lot of women in the group and I guarantee at least one of them had to go pee between the time the power went out around 4 something in the morning and sunrise. Also... in a group that large there is always at least that one person who is anxious on the night before a trip and can't sleep very well. The bottom line is that someone would have gotten up and noticed the clocks in the house were flashing 12:00 and thought to check a watch (out of 15 people somebody had at least one of those). Those winds were pretty fierce too... all 15 people slept through that? Really?
68	** They probably had a bit too much to drink the night before. Perhaps Buzz or Uncle Frank spiked all the sodas as a practical joke and it caused the kids (and adults) to oversleep.
69	** I doubt that Uncle Frank did that considering he was the one who was complaining the loudest about everyone running late. I would hope that young Buzz would not have such easy access to alcohol or be that stupid or careless... but it is Buzz so who knows? Haha.
70	** Then again, there are 15 people in the house, with 5 of them (2 adults who run on separate daily schedule, and 3 kids that are still in school) actually living in it. By normal logic, that means there should be alarm clocks in the kids' rooms (there could even be a multitude for Buzz), and those are more likely to be the more simple battery powered ones, instead of plug-in type. Who the Hell would pack up all the alarm clocks (minus one) in the house for a family trip (or ask their kid to pack up their alarm for a family trip)? And judging by how wealthy the [=McCallisters=] seems to be, they most likely have both "household alarm clocks" and smaller "travelling alarm clocks"... so no need for the kids to pack their daily use alarm clocks.
71	** There's a couple of issues with what you wrote there. First of all, the Winnetka (this is a suburb of Chicago) [=McCallisters=] number seven, two parents and five children (all of whom are still in school, as shown in the second movie, mind you); and there are six Ohio [=McCallister=] guests, plus two (Heather and Rod, son and daughter of Rob and Georgette) formerly from New York, giving a grand total of fifteen when broken down like that. Secondly, you're making assumptions about whether there are alarm clocks or not, and whether the kids packed their's if they even have any of either type. You can't really do that without the movies suggesting so one way or another. As far as we know, there's only the master alarm clock in Peter and Kate's room, and those two are the ones in charge of leading the wake up call and getting everyone set to depart for the airport.
72	[[/folder]]

Context Headscratchers / HomeAlone