Headscratchers / Home Alone

Multiple

Christmas setting

• Why do all of the movies take place around Christmastime? Isn't that redundant?
  • Because the first one did, and was a colossal hit. Why mess with a winning formula?
  • I'm sure Kevin's thinking, "I can't believe this. Another city, another booby-trapped residence. How can the same shit happen to the same kid twice?"
  • 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?
  • Home Alone 3 doesn't take place around Christmas.
  • 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.
    • 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.

Allowing Frank to stay in the house

• Why, oh, why do Kate and Peter still allow Frank inside their house? He's probably the grouchiest, most cynical, selfish member of the McCallister family, not to mention the way he treats them.
  • If there's a trope for "we put up with his crap because he's family," it applies here.
  • 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.

Ignorance of bullying

• 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.
  • Sadly, this is often Truth in Television. 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...
    • 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.
  • 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).
    • 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 Karma Houdini.
    • 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.
    • 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.

Why don't the crazy thieves give up?

• 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?
  • 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.
    • I think the "cartoonish villains" part is key. These guys have a superhuman soak, loosely akin to characters like While 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 While 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?
    • Maybe the Sunk Cost Fallacy? 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.

Age

• 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?
  • This might actually be Fridge Brilliance, Kevin may have been born on February 29th and his parents may only celebrate his birthday every two years as a compromise.
  • That may have been a last minute script change, or an oversight.
  • It does work if the first movie was just before his birthday, and the second just after.
  • 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.
  • The only evidence we have of his age in the second film is his word; Kevin may have altered it himself, for whatever reason.
  • 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.

What happened to the dog's things?

• Kate mentions that their dog in 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • They could also put the dog in a kennel because most flights don't allow dogs.
    • 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.

Nobody just happened to wake up?

• 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, accidently 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?
  • 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.

  • 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.
    • Than again , there are 15 people in the house, with 5 of them(2 adult who run on separate daily schedule , and 3 kids that still in school) actually live in it.......By normal logic , that means there should be alarm clocks in the kids rooms (Could even be multitude for Buzz) , and more likely to be the more simple battery powered ones , instead of plug-in type......Who the Hell would pack up all the alarm clock (minus one) in the house for a family trip?(Or ask their kid to pack up their alarm for a family trip?). And judge by how wealth the Mc Callister seems to be , They most likely to have both "household alarm clock" and smaller "traveling alarm clock".....so no need for the kid to pack their daily used alarm clocks.)

Home Alone One

Why didn’t Marley have Kevin stay with him?

• Maybe it’s useless to try to apply real-world logic to the film, but after Marley rescues Kevin from the burglars, why doesn’t he have Kevin stay at his place until Kevin’s parents get back? Neither of them know the parents are going to return the next morning. It seems an act of massive irresponsibility for an adult to let a small child just continue to try taking care of himself indefinitely like that, especially after he was just nearly murdered.
  • How was the house cleaned up? He probably did stay with him that night, we just don't see him until the following morning outside meeting his family. My guess? He took Kevin home, helped him clean up the house, stayed the night, then the following morning said that he had followed his advice and his family was coming over. He was outside to meet them just as Kevin's family got home.
  • Think of how it would look to Kevin's parents: they get home, worried about what's happened to their son, and find that the creepy old man next door has got their prepubescent son in his house. Even if everything eventually gets cleared up, the odds of Marley spending at least one night in a jail cell and having even more ugly rumors about him float around are high.

Why would you say that???

• Why in god's name did Kate respond to Kevin’s claims about the family hating him with: “Then maybe you should as Santa for a new family.” instead of reassuring him that they didn’t? As stated in What an Idiot! that’ll more than likely give Kevin the impression that the whole family does hate him.
  • She was already stressed out from the chaos in the house, Kevin had been getting in her way all evening, and him starting the fight in the kitchen was the last straw. She was pissed at Kevin and probably took his statement as a self-pitying exaggeration intended to beg for sympathy and decided not to indulge him.

Parents in First Class, Kids in Economy

• What kind of asshole buys themselves a 1st class airline ticket and then sticks their kids back in Coach?
  • Economy isn't a big deal for kids, who don't need the extra legroom and don't get the free booze. As long as they behave themselves it makes perfect sense.
    • Assuming your kids ARE the sort to behave themselves, which the family in the film really aren't (well, large numbers of kids are often boisterous together.) Plus, it makes the logistics of their journey just that little bit harder (neither incident might have happened without it).
  • Watsonian explanation: the kids are probably thrilled they don't have to sit with their stupid, boring parents. Not to mention the fact that they're getting to fly, since, as Peter says, "The only flying I did when I was a kid was in the back of the family's station wagon, and it wasn't going to France." The parents may have also gotten first class upgrades due to the sheer amount of travelling they were doing.
  • The Doylist explanation is well, having the parents in first class limited the number of people they'd have to show (kids working hours, perhaps?)
  • Some airlines have age limits for first class. Even if the older kids could sit up there, leaving them in coach would allow them to watch over the younger kids.
  • It's also likely a matter of cost. A first class overseas ticket costs something like six to ten times what a coach ticket costs. Much easier to pay for four people instead of fifteen people.

The McCallister family's insurance

• The McCallisters are rich. Presumably, they are insured. Is all that trouble really necessary to protect their material goods?
  • No, but Kevin doesn't know that. And insured or not, having your house broken into and looted is a MASSIVE inconvenience. Given the choice between driving off a burglar and letting him take your stuff and wreck your house, most people choose to drive off the burglar.
  • It's the principle of the thing. Getting spit on isn't very inconveniencing, either, but if somebody spat on you you would still go through the trouble of fighting them, right?
    • Heck no!
    • OK then, more likely, you'd probably feel like knocking them out.
    • They don't seem like the violent type to me.
  • Also, Kevin is home completely by himself. He was likely more afraid of them breaking in and hurting him than stealing his family's possessions. Most people aren't going to wait to find out if someone will hurt them or not.
  • Or, since he "made his family disappear," Kevin feels he's now the man of the house, and stopping the Wet Bandits is now his duty. ("This is my house. I have to protect it!")
  • Two points to add to the above: one, Kevin is eight years old and likely doesn't understand how insurance works. Two, the idea of a stranger coming into your house uninvited is incredibly unsettling, regardless of whether you're insured against it or not. Kevin's determination to protect the house is likely rooted more in the need to maintain the sense of being safe in his own home than in any desire to protect his family's belongings.

Calling the police

• In the first film, did Kevin's parents try to call him (from France) after they realised they stranded him?
  • Yes. Yes they did. They even called the Winnetka police to check on Kevin, but Kevin was hiding from Old Man Marley. As for their home, a windstorm knocked over the power and phone lines. The power was able to be reset, but the phone line stayed down for a while.
  • He was hiding because he had just encountered Old Man Marley outside of his house and hid back under the bed in a panic. Keep in mind, he had just come out from hiding under the bed in the previous scene when he glimpsed Harry and Marv. So it's perfectly logical for an 8-year-old who has just seen people trying to break into the house and then someone he believes to be a murderous old man (thanks to Buzz's story) to be scared witless and refuse to check the door.
  • The police shouldn't have given up that easily, though. Especially since they know someone is missing and was last seen around that house.

  • It IS Chicago. The police there aren't the most dependable.
    • The movie implies they're not taking the missing persons report very seriously. Partially it's Police Are Useless, but one supposes that there's also potentially reason for it: "Ma'am, could you come down to the station to file this report about your missing son?" "Well, I wish I could, but I'm in France." "... Right."
    • Kate's scrambled delivery likely contributes to the police's lackluster response. In the scene where she's talking to them, her efforts to explain the situation consist entirely of "I'm calling from Paris, my son is home alone," which leaves out critical details such as the rest of the family being on vacation and unable to reach him themselves. Notably, her call is immediately transferred to Family Crisis Intervention, likely because it was misinterpreted as a report of neglect. The fact that she was on a pay phone and had limited time to explain the situation didn't help matters. This still doesn't explain why the officers manning the phones don't encourage this obviously distraught woman to take a few deep breaths and start from the beginning, however.
    • Kevin also might not trust the police, having seen Harry disguise himself as one and then seen him again in his burglar van following him.
    • Besides, the Police can't just barge in to someone's home. They have no way of verifying Kate's identity, there have been a rash of burglaries in their neighborhood, for all they know Kate is part of the gang trying to get the police to unsecure the house for them.

Sleeping in the guest room

• Why does Kevin need to sleep in a guest room, in his own house?
  • Because the house is totally full with guests, and his parents decided that the uncles should have the bed while Kevin slept elsewhere, it happens.
  • It also goes along with the above theory that his parents are just jerks. If you notice at the end of 2, they keep the master bedroom in the suite to themselves and make everyone else bunk in one (I think) two bed room.
  • The parents get the master bedroom, the aunt and uncle sleep in another room and the kids bunk in the living room, again the kids probably saw this as the coolest thing ever as they could stay up late, watch TV, and pretty much do as they please while mom and dad snooze.
    • Also the kids did get a bedroom (that they all had to share) in the suite and the hotel even gave them extra cots. Fuller got the rather large bed to himself be cause he's a bedwetter and no one wanted to share with him.
    • What's really silly about this arrangement is that Fuller should have been given a cot, while two or three other kids shared the large, luxurious bed. After all, if he wets the bed, a cot is MUCH easier to take care of.
    • For that matter, the hotel probably has a cot or two specifically designed for bedwetters. Why force them to have an entire mattress cleaned?
  • Because whenever family visits, it's common that the person displaced are always the children. The kids always wind up being moved onto other beds or the couch.
  • Also, keep in mind that John Hughes wrote this movie, and he did the same thing to Samantha in Sixteen Candles. In both cases it helps influence a character's motivations and frustrations.
    • He wrote National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation as well, where the same thing happens; the kids need to share a room because the grandparents are staying over.
  • A rewatch of the film reveals that this 'spare bedroom' is actually the completely uninsulated attic of this house, with no obvious heat registers or radiators or any other source of heat save for an unlit wood stove next to the chimney. And it's December. In Chicago. What the hell, Kevin's parents?
    • There are houses with bedrooms like that, where heat radiates from down stairs. It actually stayed pretty warm. Heat rises, and the chimney in a house that old will radiate heat like, well, a radiator. It wasn't just a matter of "the worse bedroom for the kid".
    • Kids aren't married, and can be shunted off to a couch easier than splitting up a married couple. Kids are also less likely than adults to have the kind of back and joint problems that would preclude sleeping on a couch.
  • It's also a lesson in selflessness. Kids are naturally selfish and need to be taught that sometimes you need to give up comfort to provide comfort for others, especially guests who are displaced for the holidays. Otherwise they turn out like Frank.

Kevin surprised that his family's gone?

• Kevin knew he and his family were going on vacation, why was he acting so surprised that everyone was gone? Why didn't he put two & two together?
  • When Kevin has first woken up and everyone's gone, he sees that the cars are still in the garage and, unaware that they called two shuttle vans, concludes that they can't have gone to O'Hare.

The Scream

• Why would the aftershave burn Kevin's face for the iconic scream scene? There's no way he was shaving, he's eight years old.
  • Shaving with a 90's safety razor isn't hard at all, he's probably watched his dad do it hundreds of times and knows what he's "supposed" to do. He might not even have taken the guard off the razor and just have been pretending, but if the aftershave is old it can still burn his tender boy-skin. The fact that he doesn't take his hands off his face after the burn sinks in just makes it hurt worse.
    • I thought (and still do) that the scream-in-the-mirror scene doesn't make sense, and—even if it did—still wouldn't be funny.
  • "Funny-smelling stuff you put on your fa-...COOOOOOOOOLD!"
  • My interpretation is that Kevin was copying his dad's routine. Putting on aftershave would cause his dad to wince since it would sting if he cut himself shaving. Kevin doesn't understand that so he screams in imitation.
  • Kevin's dad uses an electric razor and left it behind because they hadn't picked up a voltage converter. While it would be far less likely to nick him, it would create microcuts that would be affected by the alcohol in the aftershave.

Empty church

• Why would a church be nearly empty on Christmas Eve? That's usually the only time it's full.
  • It's possible it was simply a choir practice (perhaps for a Christmas Day service), not the actual service.
    • It's just a rehearsal, not an actual service - Old Man Marley says that he's not welcome at the actual choir performance, so he has to see his granddaughter at practice.
  • Almost everyone on Kevin's street was on vacation, and even if there were people on other streets still there, it's possible Evening Mass had ended and Midnight Mass had either not started yet or was not held at that church.

Why doesn't Kevin call the cops on Harry and Marv?

• In the first film, why wouldn't Kevin, in addition to his veritable torture chamber of a house waiting for the thieves, also call the police the moment they arrived? By the time they even got into the house the police would be on the scene. Granted, this risks some collateral damage if the police then decide to force their way in, but it would still make sense.
  • Kevin was trying to tire them out. Burglars are very likely to escape capture. He wanted them to be too tired to be able to escape by the time the cops arrive.
  • Does he actually say that anywhere? I thought his only explanation as something along the lines of "I have to protect my home", which is fine and makes sense, but calling the cops would have made more sense!
  • Look at it this way. He does call the police eventually. Calling them right away would have messed up his "battle plan".
  • As far as Kevin was concerned, he thought he was a criminal on the run from the law...the whole toothbrush shoplifting incident and all (true, the link isn't explicitly made but, if you think about it, it does tie the toothbrush scene in a lot more tightly with the rest of the story). Also, he probably didn't want to draw the authorities' attention to the fact that he "made [his] family disappear" and is now home alone - hence why his plan involves luring the Wet Bandits into his neighbors' house and having the police catch them there.
    • I've been asking the question for years and that was actually probably the best explanation anyone has given so far, right on.
  • One of the unwritten rules of fiction is that people have to do stupid things in order to advance the plot - if Kevin had just called the police, we'd have a maybe 30 minute TV special, no slapstick, and one dull movie.
  • The same reason that his family didn't call him from Paris: his house's phone, and no one else's, had been knocked out and hadn't been repaired yet. Kevin's mom has his aunt call their neighbors when they realize he's missing, but she gets their answering machines (which is what people used before voicemail, and it had to be physically hooked up to a phone jack in your house, so if the phone line was down, it couldn't record anything) so their phones were working. How Kevin knew that the phones next door were working but didn't use them until after springing his booby traps, however, is pure plot convenience.
    • He called the police from his home. And ordered a pizza. Obviously, the phone lines were fixed at some point.
    • The phone situation was partially explained by the writers who stated that the main trunk line was still intact, allowing for local calls (such as to the police and the pizza guy), but not outside calls.
  • Or, you know, he's an eight year old kid. Normal people don't always do the "rational" thing as it is, but a lot of children don't even have a concept of it. This is not that hard to understand, people, he defends his house because he's not developed enough to go "Gee, let me sit down and think of the absolute most logical thing to do in this situation. Hm, while I am scared of strange adults and earlier felt that I was likely to get in trouble for stealing a toothbrush, and I also probably have some fears about the police taking me away from my home and putting me somewhere since I don't have any adult family members to watch out for me, that would be the course of action most likely to result in a positive outcome. Now perhaps I'll read a theoretical physics book while I wait for the officers to arrive."
  • In the novelization, Kevin was still worried the police were going to arrest him for stealing the toothbrush. Hence he doesn't want to get them involved.
  • He also recognized that Harry was the police officer that had been at his house. As far as he's aware, that may not simply be a disguise but an actual Dirty Cop.

Deus Ex Old Man Marley

• Where does Marley come from at the end of the first movie? The flooded house isn't his. It would have made more sense to have a quick cutaway to Marley, out salting the sidewalks, spotting Kevin running to the house across the street. As it's filmed, it just seems like he appears from out of nowhere to save Kevin.
  • He just happened to see Kevin and the Wet Bandits run over there. Plain and simple. If we see a cutaway to him it would ruin the suspense. By not showing him we the viewer are led to believe that there is no hope for Kevin.

Pizza Mathematics

• At the beginning of the first movie, the family (which includes 15 people) orders 10 pizzas. Assuming that each has the usual 8 slices, that's 80 slices total, or about 5 slices per person. The McCallisters must be very big eaters.
  • You'd be surprised. Buzz alone could probably put away 7 or more slices.
    • Truth in Television as kids just starting and in puberty have VERY large appetites.
  • They were planning to leave first thing the next morning, they probably wanted some cold slices around for breakfast.
  • It's possible they simply overestimated how much people actually do eat.
  • Different people also like different toppings. Kevin requested a plain cheese pizza just for himself, but Buzz ate the whole thing - which just confirms how much he can put away.
  • On a related note, the time between the pizzas being taken into the kitchen and Kevin getting there seems to be about five minutes, give or take a minute. They all stuffed down that much pizza that quickly?
    • It's possible he hid the box from Kevin and lied about eating the entire pizza, just to mess with him.
    • While it is possible to eat an entire large cheese pizza in under 6 minutes if you're a fast eater, it's also plausible that Buzz was lying (he lied about Old Man Marley) or that Buzz only ate half the pizza, at which point it would only have taken one or two other kids to consume the other half.
  • Well, to be fair and Truth in Television. Some people just can eat more. (It's not unusual for a 4th grader to finish a whole Domino's Deluxe (Large) on his own , let along a teenager like Buzz.)

Wasn't Buzz choking?

• Just after Buzz says "If you want some (cheese pizza), someone's gonna have to barf.", he starts gagging (at least, I think that's what I heard on the audio track) and bends over. When Kevin tackles him, he coughs out a large mass of chewed pizza. OK, some of the rest of the family might have been too far away to notice or they could have been distracted for a few seconds and concluded that Kevin had attacked Buzz, but considering that Kevin just saved his life, wouldn't Buzz speak up for him? And what about the people who were right next to Kevin and Buzz who would have heard Buzz choking?
  • Buzz wasn't choking. He was mocking Kevin by pretending to throw up the cheese pizza, as he had previously said that the only way he would get some would be if something threw it up. Hence why he asked Kevin to "get a plate" just beforehand. That was the whole reason Kevin got mad and starting fighting with him.

Inability to get a flight back

• In the first movie, the family's inability to find a flight back home so close to Christmas forms a major part of the plot. In the second movie, however, they're somehow able to find a flight from Miami to New York at a moment's notice on Christmas Eve—with enough room for all 13 of them, no less. Plot Hole, anyone?
  • Probably extreme luck - but they were in France in the first movie. I imagine that probably had a lot to do with it.
  • It is extremely easy to get a flight to New York City. There are 3 major airports - Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, plus LaGuardia Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, and direct flights to damn near every airport in the US, so finding a connection is cake. As for the first movie, the family did find a flight from France - they got there a whopping 90 seconds after Kate did. Her problem was that she started taking random flights like a crazy person. Scranton? Seriously?
  • The flight the family gets home in the first one highlighted as: "We took the morning flight, remember? The one you didn't want to wait for."

Harry and Marv don't rat out Kevin?

• I don't see why the police wouldn't have had to interview Kevin. What, did the Wet Bandits not finger this kid who was responsible for all of their inexplicable injuries?
  • Possibly out of pride? Also, if they have Kevin brought in, he's probably going to tell the detectives just how close they came to actually killing him (complete with corroborating testimony from Old Man Marley), so then Harry and Marv get assault, battery, kidnapping, and attempted murder added to the list of charges against them. And what could they possibly hope to gain from admitting what they went through? Kevin was defending his house from intruders. Theoretically he could do anything up to and including shooting them and get away with it. If this part of Illinois has some version of the Castle Doctrine, Kevin would be protected by it.
  • Would they actually be able to point out that Kevin assaulted them to the police without getting convicted or even taken seriously for that matter? "Hey, this Jerkass kid assaulted us and almost killed us! I mean, we only tried to break into his house, trespassed on the property where he lives, steal his stuff, intended to harm him, had stolen stuff from his neighbours' houses in the past, vandalised their property when we flooded their basement...Arrest him" Are you seriously able to do that?!? If I were a judge and got a case like that, the first words out of my mouth would be "Frivolous Lawsuit".
    • OP here - not to bring a lawsuit - but finally the police would be aware this kid was home on his own.
    • It still just sounds weird. They broke onto the property that he lives, I don't see why he would be in trouble... however his parents, on the other hand mistakenly left him alone.
    • No one said anything about Kevin being in trouble - an interview is just to gather information.
    • Yeah, but the police don't know anything about Kevin being involved if the Wet Bandits don't mention it (for reasons already expressed here) and Old Man Marley keeps quiet. So far Old Man Marley hasn't felt the need to mention Kevin being home alone to the police... so what else?
    • Not to mention, it wouldn't help their defense in any future prosecution by pointing out a key witness for the prosecution.
  • The reason Kevin was freed of any charges was actually likely due to the Castle Doctrine, which is a law on the books in Illinois (and most states) that more or less states that an intruder has no legal right to safety if they break and enter a private home or dwelling. As far as the legalese was concerned, Kevin was defending himself and his property from two people who were trespassing illegally, and thus he'd be safe from harm.
  • As a criminal, letting it get out that two grown and experienced criminals were thoroughly beaten by an eight year old would make them laughingstocks in prison and have them laughed out of court, too.
    • Not only that, they threatened said child with murder and were willing to commit grievous bodily harm on him after the said incident (and were willing to kill him as seen in the sequel. We all know what the general population does to kid-killers.

Lack of head count

• What kind of parent gets on a plane without visually, personally confirming that all his or her kids have gotten on it first?
  • Meh, chalk it up to sleep deprivation and the rushing to get on the plane. They did count the kids.
    • Notice that Mitch Murphy, one of the neighbors, was in the car and was miscounted by Heather. He was also dressed in such a way as from the back he looked quite like Kevin.
    • The point stands. They counted the kids when leaving the house, yes, but what if a kid got lost during the mad dash through the airport, or headed to the wrong gate (which happened in 2,) or got otherwise separated from the group? Any decent parent with common sense would do the following: get to the boarding gate, stand by to make sure everyone in their party boards, and THEN get on the plane him/herself. The McCallisters even had the time to reach the counter, and cheer with the rest of the family before getting on the plane, surely they could have spared a quick glance to their children.
    • I think you're Monday morning quarterbacking (Or is it Tuesday morning quarterbacking now? Meh, whatever.). Most parents would assume that if they counted their children once before embarking to the airport and were keeping the whole group together through subsequent events, and there were no problems such as an extra boarding pass (remember that Kevin's conveniently got thrown away without being noticed), that every child had made the trip. It's easy to say that the characters should have taken this one extra step that would have prevented everything that followed (and perhaps 50% of every headscratchers page is made up of this), but at some point you have to realize that the characters don't have your outside perspective and have a very different idea of what makes sense and what they need to do than someone sitting and watching everything that's happening from the outside. Yes, the parents could have been helicoptering around every one of their children as much as physically possible... and some set of even wilder coincidences would have transpired to see that Kevin got left behind anyway, and then the parents would have been criticized for not taking some extra step that kept that series of events from happening.
    • Handing out boarding passes was likely treated as a sort of backup headcount at the airport. Everyone got a pass with their name on it, confirming they were there. This was good enough for the adults, who were frazzled and in a hurry after making their flight with seconds to spare. Since Kevin's pass was accidentally thrown away, there was no extra to raise a red flag and alert them that someone was missing—and since it was Kevin's pass, there was no tangible reminder of the one person who wasn't there. From there, Out of Sight, Out of Mind was in full play.
  • Parental Obliviousness. I assumed it was just normal for parents to forget the small person if they were mad at them or were small enough to blend in. A couple times, I got left home alone when my parents went to dinner and didn't notice me.
  • Both sets of adults in the two vans thought the same thing: Kevin's in the other van.
    • And the truth that they are a 17 people group , and split into 2 vans (one carries 9 and the other carries 8) also make this even more possible.(Both group thought they are on the 8 seater van , and the other is the 9 seater one.)
  • And to be fair, the parents did learn this lesson by the second movie. Kate tried to make sure she saw everyone get on the plane to Miami, but the ticket agents force her to board before she could, since the plane is about to be pushed back—although I suppose she still could have checked for everyone after they got on the plane. However, if she did, there would be extra complications.

The pizza guy doesn't call the cops?

• The pizza guy who brings the pizza to Kevin thinks he has been shot at, so why doesn't he call the cops? (If he did, surely they would have showed up in time to stop Harry and Marv, which would spoil the plot, but it doesn't make sense that he wouldn't.)
  • I think he sold weed along with his deliveries and figured he'd get in trouble too.
    • That was never said or implied, but you could use it as Head Canon.
  • You answered your own question - it's fiction. If it will advance the plot, people will have to do stupid things.
  • He probably realized that he had been pranked a minute later after figuring out how absurd the scenario was.
    • And it's not like that guy inside the movie firing the Tommy gun ripped off the pizza boy. Kevin did pay for the pizza, even if the tip wasn't impressive. ("Cheapskate.")
  • You gonna snitch on the Mob?

Why doesn't Kevin get counselling?

• Why doesn't Kevin get counselling for his ordeal? Surely the police would have notified his parents.
  • The police didn't know anything about him Kevin because Old Man Marley took him home before the cops got there. When Kevin called the police he pretended he was his neighbour.
  • Also, aside from getting a bit scared Kevin didn't really suffer much in the way of psychological trauma. Nobody hurt him, he didn't hurt himself, he was able to satisfy his needs (i.e. he didn't go without food or water while his parents were gone), and he seems to spend most of the movie having a grand old time without his stupid boring parents or his stupid annoying brother around. At most, he was probably a bit lonely towards the end. But he made a new friend in Old Man Marley so that only lasted a little while anyway.
  • What do you expect, a twenty minute epilogue showing everything that happened to the characters after the end of the movie?
  • Given the way Kevin's family treat him in general, even in the opening to the second movie as well, I wouldn't be surprised that they don't think he needs therapy - or given that therapists are required to break doctor-patient confidentiality if the therapist believes they are a danger to themselves or others, maybe the McCallisters are worried that if Kevin tells a therapist everything about how he ended up in that situation, they'll end up having Kevin taken away from them? Underneath it all, I'm sure they love him, and to be crass the scandal could have severe repercussions for the family's reputation and even financial status.

Shoplifting the toothbrush

• When Kevin was in the store buying the toothbrush, he was scared away when Old Man Marley entered. This was an understandable reaction for a kid with a wild imagination, but did he need the toothbrush that bad? He could have avoided the cop chase had he just dropped the tooth brush and ran.
  • Kevin didn't think about what he was doing. He was scared and took off without thinking. If I remember correctly, after he made it outside, he looked down at the toothbrush in shock - he didn't know that he had taken it.
  • Tunnel vision - he got scared, didn't notice he had it. It happens all the time.
  • On a related note: why did the lady assume he was stealing the toothbrush (before he started running)? For all she knew, he was going to put it back on the shelf (perhaps because it wasn't ADA-approved), or get something else that he needed to buy.
    • If he was just doing something like that, he wouldn't have been backing away nervously. He'd have turned around and walked off. The lady at first thought he was just confused when he started backing away ("Oh, you pay for that here"), then began to grow concerned that he was trying something ("Hold on, you have to pay for that"), and then when he broke out into a run she felt her suspicions were confirmed.
    • Also why do the cops seemingly just forget about him after this one scene? Like, why don't they try to arrest him again when he goes out later to get more food? Did the Winnetka cops just decide he's not worth it (he is a kid and it was only a toothbrush so maybe so. Maybe they're busier writing up parking violations and speeding tickets.)?
    • You kind of answered your own question, but to add to it, it's not like they're going to stake out the grocery store in the hope that Kevin might randomly go there and then they can book him.
    • A popular fan theory is that Old Man Marley paid for the toothbrush, so there was no reason for the police to file a report.

Kevin doesn't deserve the wrath of the family!

• Can we agree that no matter how much of a nuisance Kevin is, he doesn't deserve the family-wide wrath he gets in the beginning of the first film; specifically, when Uncle Frank calls him a jerk and the rest of the family glares at him in silent agreement? My mom says that no matter what kind of mess any of us could made, if her brother called out her kid like that, her ire would be at the uncle, not her child, because no one talks to her child like that. Mrs. McCallister, on the other hand, is perfectly OK with her brother chewing out her kid in front of everyone, apparently.
  • Frank is actually Kate's brother-in-law (at the beginning, on the phone, she says something along the lines of '[Peter's] family are here and it's a mad house.').
  • Fair point about Kate, but I don't remember her being in the room when the whole thing went down. As for whether he deserved the nasty looks he got, try to look at it from the family's perspective. Kevin had been annoying the shit out of all of them with his constant whining and complaining while they were all busting their asses to get ready for this big family trip. They were already stressed out by that, and with Kevin on top of that. Then Kevin goes and has a temper tantrum that wrecks the whole damn kitchen because his brother ate the last piece of cheese pizza before he could. We sympathize with Kevin because he's the protagonist, but from the family's perspective he was being an asshole.
  • Buzz didn't just eat the last slice; he ate the entire damn pie (which must have been specifically ordered for Kevin) then deliberately vomited it up. Buzz should have been punished for instigating.
    • Buzz should've been slapped for having the cheek to pull the "you little shit, I'm so offended" act after he caused all the trouble. And is he ever called out for being an asshole? Nope. Also, why did Kate feel the need to let Kevin be humiliated in front of everyone? He deserved to be punished for acting out, yeah, but couldn't she have just taken him out of the kitchen, scolded him and sent him to bed?
    • As soon as Uncle Frank said his bit, she tried to take him right out of the kitchen, but he refused to go. When she finally had him out, she scolded him, and sent him to bed... and, when he objected to sharing the bed with a bedwetter, she told him straight out that they would put Fuller somewhere else. We don't get to see what happened when she went back into the kitchen. We don't know what she said to Buzz, what she said to any of the others, or how The Adults handled Uncle Frank.
  • We're supposed to sympathize with the protagonist of a story - making his family be assholes to him is a good way to do that.
  • Actually, I think if you rewatch the movie without child eyes, nearly every single character is a bit of a jerk. The uncle in this scene, the mother is needlessly over the top in punishing Kevin, Kevin in how annoying he was being, all of his peers for not being willing to help him, whomever ordered the pizza and just ordered black olives on every single one except one knowing that there was someone in the house who only ate cheese, Buzz for taking the pizza on purpose, Marv and Harry for obvious reasons, the pizza delivery man for hitting the statue (or maybe blame the guy who didn't place the statue property), the police dispatcher for not wanting to take a call about an unsafe child, the police officer for visiting a house with a small child and when he doesn't answer the door says that the mother was just too dumb to know what kids she had, the woman in the store for being so snotty about his toothbrush question, Jimmy for getting him involved in a chase from a police officer... it goes on. The only actually good character is Marley, and I think the Lincoln Park homeowners association would like a word with him.
  • IMO Jimmy gets a pass. I might not be able to see his employee contract, but I figure it doesn't say that he has to risk life and limb by chasing a shoplifter after he leaves the store. The police however are obliged to do things like this, and could be presumed to be more capable of doing it in winter weather conditions than a lowly shopworker (even if this particular cop gets stymied by the ice rink crowd). Also, Kevin sprinted across the street, which a) put him closer in reach to the cop than Jimmy and b) again, Jimmy could risk getting run over if he tried to catch up. You expect him to risk that over a toothbrush?
  • That's sorta the whole point of the movie, and why it's so popular. Everyone has felt like the undeserving outcast/scapegoat of their family at one time or another. By establishing Kevin as an unfairly-treated outcast that the audience can relate to early on, it makes his triumph over Harry and Marv all the more awesome. In other words, the movie is meant to tell us: "Don't worry if you feel like the black sheep of the family today; you may just be a hero tomorrow." This is the sort of thing that the early seasons of Stranger Things ride on, the social outcasts and black sheep being the heroes who save the day.
  • People need to be a bit less hyperbolic and figure out what "reprehensible" means. Johnny, the sadistic murderous psychopath of the Angels with Filthy Souls film, is a reprehensible character; Harry and Marv, who take pleasure in burglarizing houses and stealing charity donations on Christmas, are reprehensible characters. Kevin's family are just a bunch of jerks at the absolute worst (and he is just as much as some of them are), who are packed together in a not-quite-large-enough house and are feeling the stress of the season and their upcoming vacation, are a fairly average family who are sometimes hostile and unfair to each other but still love and care for one another deep down, and we don't even see them for more than a few days total anyway. Kevin was sent to his room semi-unfairly for starting a fight over pizza (and nobody saw Buzz start to throw the pizza up), it's not like he was locked in the basement with a vicious animal to guard him.

Angels With Lack of Gun Safety In Their Souls

• Johnny, the gangster packing the Thompson M1928A1 in Angels with Filthy Souls lifted the weapon without cocking or taking the safety off. Wouldn't "You Fail Gun Safety Forever" be called in here? Surely he'd want to have to cock the thing for his own safety the rest of the time?
  • It's debatable whether that counts as a Gun Safety Failure or a Gun Knowledge Failure. The filmmakers may have simply forgotten that a gun must be cocked and the safety taken off before it will fire at all.
  • The Angels with Filthy Souls films have a degree of Stylistic Suck about them anyway; they are pretty clearly intentionally cheesy, so it's not impossible that this was deliberate to show that the In-Universe filmmakers were hacks.
  • Johnny is a trigger-happy psychopath who laughs as he kills. Having the safety on wastes precious milliseconds between picking up the gun and shooting people with it.
• Also, the Angels with Filthy Souls was meant to mimic Film Noir, which often involved gangsters and tommy guns. And, often, they would take artistic liberties. Poor gun handling wouldn't be that far fetched for a gangster film that's meant to be from the 1940s/1950s, so the filmmakers may have left gun safety out because there's probably quite a few examples of it in actual gangster films from that time.

Kevin recognizing Officer Harry

• I never got why Kevin was so shocked and horrified when he saw Harry for the second time, and recognized him as the cop from before. I know he's young, but did he think that cops always wore their uniforms and exclusively drove squad cars? For all Kevin could know, Harry might have just been off duty.
  • Here's the thing. Off-duty police officers would likely still be driving their own squad cars^note Those that drive their patrol units off-duty do so with the expectation that they might be called back to duty in the event of an emergency, or personal sedans/SUVs/minivans. The only times you're gonna see cops driving around in a work van or dressed like a plumber is if they're undercover cops who are conducting long-term surveillance on someone, which is not the case here. It's a fair point and Harry might have been innocent, but it was unlikely, and he wasn't. Plus, like so many headscratchers on this page, the answer is that Kevin is 8. It's understandable if he found it strange.
  • The "8 year olds are just like that" argument can't be stated enough. It's like as a kid encountering your school teachers outside the setting you normally associate them with. Kevin saw the "cop" dressed like a bum, and driving a strange van, and it weirded him out. Ironically if Harry and Marv hadn't started following him he probably would have gone home and put it out of his mind. Besides, he had just stolen that toothbrush (albeit accidentally). He's just escaped from one cop and he runs into someone he recognizes as another. At this point, he's definitely feeling a little paranoid that the police are following him everywhere.
    • This encounter with Harry and Marv was after Kevin noticed someone trying to get into his house the first time (the occasion where he used the fake party to dissuade them). It's possible he just put two and two together and realized that this shady looking guy may not have been a real cop and was casing the joint before.
  • Also, Harry's gold tooth was a dead giveaway. You'd be pressed to find a real cop who had such a tooth. Hell, Peter seems to recognize the tooth when he picks it up in the epilogue.

There is no one around to do a wellness check on Kevin? Nobody?

• How is it that there was nobody available to check on Kevin? No acquaintances, coworkers, the cleaning lady - anyone?
  • Indeed. If you are in France, you'd be justified in calling family/friends in the next state over from where you live to drive several hours there to check compared to flying several thousand miles home.
  • They were calling everyone they could think of. They called everyone in Kate's address book and everyone that lived on their street. But since it was the holidays, they couldn't get a hold of anyone. And there were only so many calls they could make using pay phones. That's why Peter suggested they go to his brother's house so the police would have a way to get back to them. Even then, however, they couldn't get a hold of anyone because they were either all out shopping or no one else was home for the holidays.
  • It does stretch credibility that there is literally no one around who could help Kevin. No McCallister cousin, aunt, uncle, in-law, etc. or any coworkers Peter or Kate have at their places of work who could help out in an emergency (grandparents are mentioned in dialogue). And apparently, no one in the neighborhood answers their phone/checks their messages or even looks out of their window and sees that that McCallister kid is still wandering around when the entire family are supposed to be in Paris.
    • I believe it was mentioned that most of the neighbors on the McCallister's street were traveling as well. The Murphy family went to Florida, many of the others were implied to be gone as well. In all the outdoor scenes on Kevin's street, there is no activity (no cars, no people on the sidewalks). It could very well be that Kevin and Old Man Marley are the only people left on the street. The McCallisters probably don't know anyone that lives on other nearby streets, and without the benefit of things like Google and the internet, finding out the phone number of someone nearby that you don't know is not an easy thing to do... especially from Paris.
    • It's not unusual for people to live far from family. Add in that it's the holidays. Their family may be traveling themselves or have other plans.
    • The same goes for coworkers. Even if Kevin's parents know how to get hold of them outside of work, they're likely on vacation themselves and not in a position to go check on Kevin.

Cleaning up the traps

• So let me get this straight. How the hell does Kevin clean up every single trap that he created for the house after battling the thugs? Surely, he just couldn't have left the house the way it was. Not to mention that he tarred the entire downstairs basement. It's lampshaded with Buzz's room, but Kevin pretty much destroyed the house when he stopped Harry and Marv. It's no wonder the entire family goes back to thinking he's a piece of shit again in the next film (which might add up to Fridge Brilliance).
  • Except for the tar on the basement steps, pretty much everything could have been easily cleaned up when you think about it: the feathers, the broken Christmas tree ornaments, the iron, the blowtorch, the toy cars, paint cans. But yes, he probably wouldn't have been able to clean up the tar. But I'm sure he'll probably explain what he had been doing by tarring the steps. Then there's the trashing of Buzz's room. Now the damage Kevin and the crooks did to his uncle's house in the second movie, on the other hand, will be something for that family to take care of...
    • Don't forget in the first movie Kevin sprayed the steps with water that froze into ice.
    • Kevin had plenty of time to step outside and throw some salt over the steps. Hell, the snow shovel guy might have done it for him.
    • Notice how the steps are covered in deep snow when Kevin peeks outside the morning after the break-in, so clearly they're not slippery anymore.
    • They'd still be slippery, just covered in snow. But it would obfuscate his antics since heavy snow like that would turn the bottom layer into ice.
    • According to the commentary on the Family Fun Edition DVD, director Chris Columbus said that in the original draft of the second script, the film was to open with Kevin cleaning up the house after the events of the first movie... so, it's not like they didn't completely think things through.
  • Old Man Marley perhaps.
  • Which would make sense; given his regrets towards his family and generally being a decent person, he wouldn't let a little boy be alone after all that. Old Man Marley helps clean up (reading the second point, everything except the tar could have been cleaned up in an hour or two) and sleeps in a guest room. Very early in the morning, he calls up his son and asks to reconcile, then goes out to meet them. He just misses Kate, but this is why Kevin catches a glimpse of the reunion; he knew it was coming and was waiting to see it.
    • Fridge Brilliance, perhaps? I mean, in the beginning of the second film, Kevin is once again hated by the whole family. Remember Buzz screaming, "What did you do to my room?!" Knowing this family and the fact that a full year had passed, it's possible that within a few months they went back to treating Kevin like shit. After all, no matter how 'cool' it is that he survived the vacation by himself; he still had to explain why there was tar on the basement steps. Take it even further by having Kevin at least try to explain the truth of what really happened and you have an entire family thinking he's full of shit... again.
    • Buzz's screaming is, in and of itself, a bit of Fridge Brilliance. Even if Kevin cleaned up the mess in Buzz's room, he didn't have the time or resources to replace Buzz's broken shelves, much less put everything back exactly where it was. Buzz would definitely notice the shelves were missing, so Kevin would have to admit to breaking those...which would lead to him taking Buzz's money to buy food. Neither of those things would endear him to Buzz, and his other siblings wouldn't take kindly to the idea that he might have gone through their things as well.

Chasing a shoplifter out of the store is not allowed

• Working in retail, you're taught something vitally important: It doesn't matter if the customer is stealing a freakin' PlayStation, you do not chase after him out of the store. You could get your ass killed that way. So doesn't the whole toothbrush chase scene seem like a severe case of Disproportionate Retribution, to say nothing of ignorance on the writers' part as to standard operating procedure in this case? And is Winnetka so crime-free that chasing after a kid for stealing a 99-cent toothbrush really is the best use of a police officer's time?
  • I work at Walmart and until fairly recently, we (not me) did chase, tackle, and restrain shoplifters. Not for something so minor and not to such lengths, but it's totally possible they just got excited. Besides, that 8 year old has a knife or a gun or something and is going to turn on you?
  • Odds on it's to help set up Kevin's idea of being a criminal (the shopkeeper calls a police officer in to help catch him), thus eliminating the immediate necessity of calling the police when he finds out that Harry and Marv are planning to rob his house.
  • Also, the police officer may not have been chasing him to arrest him or anything, but simply to find out why a 8-year old kid is stealing in the first place and ensure that he and his family is okay.
  • To be fair, chasing and detaining a shoplifter is perfectly legal; it's called shopkeeper's privilege, so long as the suspect is detained on or near the store premises. The prohibition against doing so that you see stores like Walmart impose is a matter of store policy, not law. And that's on a company by company basis. This store is a small general store, which is less likely to absorb the financial losses from shoplifting than the big box stores can, and consequently is more likely to assert the shopkeeper's privilege. Additionally, the store owner was able to secure the assistance of a cop, who is not bound by the limits of shopkeeper's privilege. As far as the value of the toothbrush, for all the storeowner knows, Kevin could have stuffed more items in his coat before dashing off, or is being used as a distraction for another shoplifter.
  • Bear in mind that this film is set in the early 1990s; even if it was universal store policy or an actual law today (and it isn't) to not chase shoplifters, things were certainly different back then.

Buzz's "boring street" story

• Buzz states that they "live in the most boring street in the whole United States of America, where nothing remotely dangerous will ever happen". Why would he say that if he lived next door to someone he believed to be a serial killer?
  • A. Buzz isn't the brightest bulb in the box.
  • 2. He may have just made up the story about Old Man Marley to scare Kevin.
    • Almost certainly. The story is exactly the sort of lurid, over the top local urban legend that teenagers will try to scare each other (and their little siblings) with, whether they believe it or not.
  • And D. He really doesn't seem to give a shit about what happens to Kevin.
• Also, Buzz may be unintentionally right and wrong on his assessment when he says they live in the most boring street in America where nothing dangerous ever happens. He lives in what is basically a posh street, not in a highly populated area and there's probably not so many noticeable crimes (outside of the fabricated one he told to scare Kevin and his cousin). So, as far as he knows, the street is boring because, outside of the one instance where there happen to be burglars targeting houses that occurs in the film, nothing ever really happens. So, Buzz is sort of right with the fact that on any other time, there'd be nothing to worry about. He's wrong in regards to what's happening in this instance of circumstances (with Kevin being by himself, and Buzz being unaware of the robbers), but normally, the street may in fact be the most boring street in the whole USA where nothing dangerous ever happens.
  • Taking real life into consideration, that's really missing a huge event considering they live in esentially this universe's version of Winnetka. Winnetka was the site of the Hubbard Woods Elementary School shooting by Laurie Dann in 1988. She killed one student, wounded eight others and later committed suicide at another person's house. Hell, one or more of the Mccallister could have been in that school!
    • I don't think they would put a reference to a then-recent elementary school shooting in a family movie, even in the 90s, when movies had generally edgier content. Plus, you yourself said it's in this universe's version of Winnetka, so this could simply have been one where the shooting never happened.

Assuming Kevin was left at home

• Why did they jump to the conclusion that Kevin was at home? For all they knew, they could have lost him at the airport, which should have been their first thought as they supposedly had an accurate head count done before they left the house.
  • Re-reading the script, there's a scene skip between when Kate shouts "KEVIN!" and immediately after, where the flight attendant mentions that "the captain is doing all he can - (their) phones are out of order." Presumably, in that time skip they had already found out at that point that Kevin wasn't at O'Hare, as if he was just forgotten at the gate he would in all likelihood have already been in airport authorities' custody, since the plane had taken off several hours before and the captain would have been able to relay that message to the parents.
  • Kate's Oh, Crap! moment was when she realized that she forgot to get Kevin out of bed in the middle of the panic. After this, they would have went to the back of the plane to check on the kids and see if he was there, and confirm that he wasn't, and also confirm that nobody in the family had actually seen or talked to him all that day (and given what a brat Kevin can be, on reflection they'd realize that they hadn't been bugged by him all day), so the most logical explanation is that Kate was right and they did forget to bring him. It was possible that they had left him behind at the airport, but the most probable explanation was that they had just left him behind and miscounted somehow, which is what happened. And yes, they had time between scenes to check that he wasn't at the airport.

11 kids, and they don't do a role call?

• There are 11 kids who they are trying to get to the airport, and not once do they think to do a rolecall instead of a headcount? They could even save time by having each parent call out their own kids names. "Buzz?" "Here!" "Megan?" "Here!" "Linnie?" "Here!" "Jeff?" "Here!" "Kevin? Kevin? Kevin!?" "I think he's still in the house." Takes even less time than a headcount, because first you have to get everyone to stop moving, and then you have to count them, probably multiple times just to make sure you counted right. And they have one of the kids do the counting—which means they have to count themselves (and the girl counts herself twice) which is confusing.
  • They were pressed for time and in a hurry, and Mitch Murphy looked just enough like Kevin that Heather wouldn't give a second glance.

Harry and Marv destroying the houses they rob

• Burglars are usually stealing things they can fence later, and usually don't bother anything that isn't of value. Why the heck does Marv, at least, sloppily sweep stuff off of shelves into a sack with a crowbar while randomly stepping on things and smashing things on purpose? Are they just robbing houses for the fun of it?
  • I wouldn't be surprised if Marv actually is. He's a Manchild more than anything else. Hence the whole "calling card" thing.
  • Harry does comment on Marv's lack of stealth when robbing the Murphy house. Later, when he finds out Marv left the water running, he goes on at him for it. It seems to be a case of both having standards (telling him it's a sick thing to do), and he also mentions they don't need that kind of identifying mark. Naturally it comes back to bite them at the end when one of the arresting cops mentions that they know every house they've hit.
• This practice seems to be intended as an Establishing Character Moment, demonstrating that neither of the burglars is particularly bright (and that, between them, Harry is the brains). Ironically, Marv's flooding strategy isn't without merit. Think about it: you come home from vacation and find out your house flooded while you were gone. In the chaos of assessing the damage and trying to deal with insurance, you don't immediately realize that most of your valuables are missing, which gives the criminals responsible more time to make their getaway. Of course, in practice this is ruined by Marv's own habit of smashing everything, which makes it pretty clear that the flood was the work of an intruder rather than an unfortunate accident.
• How is it that his only argument against Marv flooding each house they steal from is that it's a "sick thing to do"? You'd think that Harry would know that, not only would the police know each house they stole from thanks to the flooding, but they'd also get the two with destruction of property thanks to flood damage.
  • The police say they know what houses they robbed thanks to the flooding, but some of it could have been copycats. It probably wouldn't stand up in court as proof.
  • Harry doesn't think they're going to get caught. If they do, there is probably going to be more than enough evidence against them even without the flooding (though obviously that doesn't help — and copycats are extremely unlikely, plus the flooding would not be the only proof and it would stand in court) to put them away for a long time. His main concern is that even without the risk of capture, it's still unhealthy...and hey, maybe this is even a case of Even Evil Has Standards, since while he has no problems robbing houses for profit (and he wasn't yet ready to kill a kid — they probably originally planned to just tie Kevin up and otherwise leave him be if he hadn't tortured them first), flooding and wrecking their homes for no reason other than "It's our calling card" might be a step too far even for him.
  • If you listen during their argument before they nearly hit Kevin with their van; Harry is indeed saying 'we don't need that kind of heat', so he's definitely aware that flooding the houses is an identifying trait that might come back to haunt them. He glares at Marv when the police make note of this at the end.

The fate of Axl the tarantula

• What exactly happened to Axl, Buzz's pet tarantula? The last we see of it, it's crawling away after scaring Marv and Harry. And did Kevin even notice that it escaped until he sees it crawling across the stairs?

Blowtorch

• Why do Kevin's parents have an antique blowtorch? Even in 1990, that thing was ancient, and there had to be more safety-conscious and effective models on the market.
  • It's probably as you said, an antique, maybe someone in the house restores old things as a hobby, maybe it's just an old thing that a great grandparent left, and Kevin was the first to find it, buried somewhere in the basement.

Just rent a car

• Kate didn't really need the Polka King: why couldn't she just rent her own car and drive herself?
  • Because she gave all her money and jewelry to that old couple in exchange for their plane ticket, and she was exhausted from traveling. Plus, renting a car would mean returning it, so she couldn't do that either.
  • In addition, debit cards do not exist and only few high end places would accept credit cards. I suspect that interstate car rentals were very rare too since Onstar, GPS, or any tracking system was non-existent.
    • Debit cards absolutely existed in 1990, and all companies certainly would have accepted credit cards — in fact, they may have required them to be able to charge for damages. Interstate car rentals were not rare.

Marley's behaviour

• I didn't understand Marley's behaviour. We and Kevin are informed by Buzz, that Marley is a murderer, which he is certainly not, as everyone get to know during the movie. But why... why... WHY is he acting so suspiciously and shady through his scenes, until it's proven otherwise? Granted, the first scene is during the Buzz's narration, and Marley just looks to their window, frowning. OK, he has something of a resting bitch face given his grief over relations with his family. I should know, I have a resting bitch face myself. Next time Kevin bumps to him, when he runs outside. Again, resting bitch face, not harmful intent against Kevin. But he just could try to talk to him and ask Kevin, why is he so afraid of him. But what really got me was the scene in the store. Marley shambles to the counter and SLAMS his injured hand on it pretty hard, and gives Kevin a menacing stare. Oh my god, does Marley have absolutely no manners? He could normally walk to the counter, pay and not mind Kevin. If Kevin still jumped scared, he could have asked him straight away "Hey, you are the kid from my neighbourhood. Why are you so jumpy all the time?". Or at least ignored Kevin altogether. But he acted like a really mentally deranged man. The next scene, he's in the church and he acts as a civilised person. Because NOW Kevin and audience must get to know he's decent and far from murdering someone.
• Same poster, I just wanted to split this, as it is really long. I have already seen this same problem with Sirius in HP and Prisoner of Azkaban. Sirius is acting exactly the way everyone describes him. Supposedly raging murdering lunatic, he giggles when attacked by Harry and so on. But as soon as we and Harry get to know he's been a good guy all along, he behaves more than modest and gentle. Isn't there a trope for this? And if there isn't, someone should create it. "Heroic character that is described by everyone as a villain is acting like a villain, until story proves otherwise."
  • Maybe there is an exaggeration which the film presents in the scene which is more than what actually happened in the movie's reality. In the reality, Marley just walked in quietly and placed his hand on the counter instead of slamming it, then he glanced at Kevin. But Kevin's impressionable young mind imagined it as a slam, enhanced by his unreasonable fear of Marley. As for your point about Harry Potter (probably better to raise that there, btw) put it down to Sirius being bloodlusted for Peter, and Remus having to talk some sense into him.
  • Added to it, we see the furnace in the basement laughing evilly and calling out to Kevin menacingly, but it’s clear that it’s all Kevin’s imagination and not "real". Marley’s behaviour could similarly be Kevin’s perception rather than "reality".

The Polka band wasting their lives on the road

• Gus Polinski tells Kevin's mom that his band is on the road for 48 weeks a year and they barely ever see their families and one of the band members has never even met his kid. Earlier he told her the highlight of their career was selling 623 copies of their polka record in Sheboygan in the early 70's (which by then was already about 20 years earlier). So these guys are wasting their lives on the road and all they have to show for it is 623 copies sold in one city almost two decades ago? How sad is that?? Even if they were signed to a major record label when they sold those 623 copies they would surely have been dropped by that label after such abysmal sales figures. So what have these guys been doing for 20 years? Playing at kid's birthday parties and bar mitzvahs? How do they even still have a career? A career worth being on the road for almost the entirety of the year?

Home Alone Two

Harry not using his gun

• In Home Alone 2, Harry clearly states that he has a gun on him. After Kevin takes a picture of them robbing the toy store, gets on his uncle's roof and starts chucking bricks, why doesn't Harry just shoot him, enter the building somehow, and get the camera himself?
  • I imagine it's because you shouldn't be fooled by the "One's Stupid, One's Smart" duo thing going on there - the Wet Bandits are both stupid; Marv's just stupider. That's my take, anyway. Alternatively, Harry might not have wanted to attract attention from firing a gun on the streets, and if I recall correctly, when he does pull out his gun, it had no silencer. And he was at the edge of his patience. I'm sure if Harry might've gotten a few of those bricks, though, it might have changed.
    • He was in New York. A gunshot wouldn't attract attention.
    • New York is not Somalia.
    • Somalia isn't Somalia either (at least, that media image of Somalia people in the West came to believe exists in the real world).
  • If he shot at Kevin from the street, it might have attracted attention and made it harder to get away unnoticed by the time he got inside, got the camera, and got out. He didn't have the gun immediately handy when Kevin first appeared at the toy store; he mostly took chase with the intent of shooting him.
  • He probably only had a handful of bullets and wanted to be sure he had a clear shot.
  • It might also be a question of morals. Remember: Harry and Marv are first and foremost thieves. Their method of choice is usually to break into peoples' houses while they're not there, which effectively minimizes the risk of anyone getting hurt. So, sure, threatening Kevin, why not? But actually killing him? That's on a whole different scale of evil.
    • Exactly. As we all know, Even Evil Has Standards.
    • But they seemed quite willing to kill him at the end of the first movie. True, their time in prison might have given them a chance to cool off, but then why did they go after him in the second film even before he ruined their heist? What were they planning to do, give him a wedgie and let him go?
    • In the first film, they wanted to put him through his own traps, not kill him. If those traps didn't cause any serious bodily harm to Harry and Marv (since in the Home Alone universe, people can survive almost anything), they probably wouldn't have killed Kevin, even though he was smaller than them.
  • In any case, just because Harry had a gun doesn't mean he was any proficient at using it.
    • Or willing to use it. Just because you can hold a weapon in your hand doesn't mean you're cold blooded enough to shoot a 9 year old between the eyes.
  • He would have to have been a pretty decent shot to produce, aim and fire the weapon at a small, distant and moving target in the dark before Kevin ducks. Even if he managed it, there's still the matter of him being in a highly populated area and the shot would have attracted attention. Finally, they're on foot and won't be able to get very far before the police start searching the area for the crack-shot who just executed a nine year old. Remember the first movie - Marv is stupid enough to leave a trail of evidence everywhere he goes, Harry less so.
    • Decent shot? He would have to be an extremely good shot to hit Kevin at that point. He would have to hit a target of less than a foot square while angry and shooting a revolver from a distance of more than 40 feet nearly vertically with double gloved hands. Even the best marksmen would have a difficult time hitting him.
    • And, Kevin could quickly evade him as he drew, which is reflected in the fact that he managed to avoid getting hit by Marv's retaliatory brick.

World Trade Center edited out

• Why are the twin towers edited out of the New York skyline in TV reruns of Home Alone 2? Is it still too soon? Why, when it's very obvious that Kevin is running around in a pre-Guliani New York? (Proof: The rows and rows of street vendors—now you have to have a permit to do that shit.)
  • As I recall, Kevin's entire tour of New York City is cut, presumably for time constraints.
    • Haven't seen it in years, but I'm pretty sure I remember Kevin standing on top of one of the towers, looking through one of those tourist binocular things, so it was probably cut because of that.
    • I just watched this movie on TV and as of this edit(September 2010) the scene with the Twin Towers was left intact.
    • Might be different here in the UK - But it was on last weekend - 04/06/11 - And the Twin Towers and Kevin's entire tour around New York was still in there.
    • As of December 24, 2011, the rerun did show the scene of Kevin on the Twin Towers, too.

The Bird Lady's problem

• What's wrong with the Bird Lady in the second movie? I understand Kevin fearing Old Man Marley because Buzz scared him with a story, but why exactly does Kevin declare the Bird Lady "sick" upon first seeing her? She's not ugly or deformed, and she's (oddly enough for someone who spends all her time with pigeons) not covered in bird feces. What's his problem?
  • He's a kid, she's some lady who has a permanent "stern face," is covered in birds. I guess he forgot the lesson he learned in the previous film so that they could repeat the "scary stranger turns out to be a kind person, whom Kevin befriends" thing.
    • Kevin is ten. A Forgotten Aesop would not be out of character, especially since he's alone again and likely scared and stressed.
  • I don't think he "forgot" it so much as the people in question were on different levels of "weird". The only reason Kevin was scared of Marley at all was Buzz's story; aside from an occasional stare, there's nothing outwardly imposing about him, and anyone more mature or less impressionable would see him for what he is. The Pigeon Lady is a little different; she's a homeless woman in ratty clothes covered in birds. Average people probably would find her a little out there.
• Maybe he had ornithophobia?

Room service charges

• It seems odd that the Plaza would charge the family for room service after they gave them a suite for their screw up.
  • It's a big family; they probably would have had to fire someone if they didn't charge them for something.
  • I like to think that it was the concierge and his staff getting back at Kevin for putting them through hell during the chase scene. Send the whippersnapper's dad a $967 room service bill and let things sort themselves out.
  • At early 1990's prices, there's no way that Kevin racked up that high a room service bill in less than a week. ^note I just checked the Plaza's current (Jan 2019) room service menu. Even at today's prices and Kevin being a big eater, he'd have difficulty racking up more than $100/day for food (unless he went for the caviar, or had steak every single meal), and that's not counting inflation My guess is that the concierge tacked on an outrageous extra fee (like maybe doubling the bill) for time and trouble to him and his staff, and thinks that Peter won't challenge the bill or demand an itemised receipt.
    • We get a quick glance at a few of the things he ordered including 2 cakes, an ice cream bar, 6 orders of mousse, 8 strawberry tarts, 6 flan, 36 chocolate covered strawberries, and an entire pastry cart (which alone is $210). And that is just one page of several. Take those and the tip off and the total is less than $350. Certainly reasonable if he's eating every meal there (plus snacks) for several days.
  • If nothing else, it may have just been a deterrent to prevent the family from abusing the generosity and racking up their own massive bill. For all they know, Kevin had gained his extravagant taste from his family and they didn't want to have to deal with 967 x 20+ dollars’ worth of expenses and damages. Plus, remember, Kevin's room was on a shared floor and had pulled the Angels With Even Filthier Souls prank - the backlash from that among the other guests would be painful too.
  • Even though by all accounts all of the charges should have been comped, the hotel staff was still acting on good faith when Kevin ordered all that stuff, assuming Peter was on his way. The question is, is whether or not after talking with Kevin did he dispute the bill?

Harry the Car Smasher

• In the second film, how is Harry able to smash the car up that badly? He probably got thrown one or two stories up, and I can't count how many other—more realistic—films where a character falls from a much greater height on to a car and doesn't crush it nearly as much.
  • The films operate on a certain amount of cartoon physics. They're family movies, they're not there to show battered corpses and horrible wounds.

The Concierge "just doing his job."

This is more of a meta thing, but why do people give the concierge a pass for "doing his job" when trying to bust Kevin? He should be calling taxis and making dinner reservations, not investigating possible credit card fraud or harassing underage guests. If he thinks Kevin is there under false pretenses that's a job for security and the House Detective, not him. I get the storytelling reason why it's him, but I just don't understand the fan reaction of trying to defend his actions in any way. He goes way beyond his bounds and authority as a glorified dayplanner just because he thinks the plaza is too good for some kid.

Marv's immunity to brain trauma from brick-hitting

• In Home Alone 2, how can Marv have multiple bricks hit him in the head and suffer nothing worse than an ugly mark on his forehead? Shouldn't his brains be splatted all over the pavement?
  • How is he later able to survive getting electrocuted without going into cardiac arrest? How is Harry able to survive falling on that car without shattering his spine or survive sticking his burning head in a toilet full of kerosene virtually unscathed? Because Harry and Marv are apparently invincible.
  • They're like Saiyans. Whatever doesn't kill them simply makes them.... stranger.
  • Actually, it's not just in Home Alone 2. In this video, you can see that some of Kevin's traps from the first two films would have killed both Harry and Marv multiple times over.
  • They're not human but are Terminator prototypes accidentally let loose. They may be dumb, but are utterly invincible and will NEVER stop until Kevin is dead.
  • As stated, this is a family movie that operates on cartoon logic.

The incompetent gate agent

• In the second movie, Kevin convinces the ticket clerk to let him on the plane before it leaves. When on the plane, the clerk asks if Kevin sees anyone he knows, and Kevin sees the back of the guy's head he was following and says, "There's my dad over there!" Instead of questioning it, the clerk goes along with it and tells him to find an empty seat. I don't care how big a hurry the plane was in to leave; there's always time to go over to the man and verify that he's Kevin's father (which he wasn't). Furthermore, are we to believe that Kevin wouldn't have shouted "Hey dad!" or something? I know this would've ended the movie really quickly, but this scenario wouldn't happen in real life.
  • The lady works in an airport. It's Christmas. While she might normally have the mental and moral fortitude to make absolutely sure, it's probably been battered out of her at that point. Kid says "That's my dad!", the lady goes "Okay, that's your dad, move on through, move on through."
  • You want to claim that there are no incompetent people in real life?
  • If the gate agent or anyone in a position of authority looks too closely at Kevin and helps him, you don't have a film. The amount of hoops both films go through to make their plot happen goes beyond coincidence.
  • This is certainly something that you could never do today in a Post-9/11 airport. Then again, much of the events of the films wouldn't be able to happen with airport safety and security changes.

Kate's search for Kevin

• In Home Alone 2 after getting to the hotel, Kevin's mom declares she's going into New York to look for him. Why didn't she go to their relative's house, the one Kevin found by himself (The movie would have taken quite a turn when she got caught in his traps though...)?
  • She knew that the relative was on vacation.
  • She does actually stop there and knock on the door, then immediately turns around and hails a cab for Times Square. A few seconds later, Kevin arrives.

Room Service Bill

• At the end of the second film, Cedric hands Buzz the bill that Kevin's racked up during his stay. He proceeds to show this to his dad, who cries out loud, end film. What I've always wondered was:

1. Why does Cedric hand them them the bill on Christmas Day? Surely there's a better time to get the bill from your stay, for example when, I don't know, actually checking out of the hotel?
2. Why is Peter so pissed about the bill? I get it, $967 is still a fair chunk of money, but it's clear that Kevin's parents earn an incredibly good wage (the big house in the Chicago suburbs, the annual Christmas trips to France and Florida etc) What's just under $1000 to them? If Kevin had bought anything dangerous or forbidden (like drugs or a gun or such nonsense) that I would get... but cookies and ice-cream? If my 10 year old son spent $1000 or less just on that (when I had the disposable income of Peter) I like to think I wouldn't be so pissed.
   • 1) Mr. Hector, the Hotel Concierge, wound up taking the blame for a lot of things that happened, so he handed them the bill that day out of revenge for all the crap Kevin put him through. 2) That $967 was charged to Peter's credit card, and it wasn't Kevin's money to spend. Disposable income or not, if I had a child who ran up such a large bill on my credit card, I'd be mad too.
   • Kevin spent $967 just on room service; that's on top of whatever he paid to get the room in the first place, for however long he planned to stay, and any other expenses. Kevin spent way more than $967; that's just the most ridiculous of his expenses.
   • But there's no way that Kevin racked up that high a room service bill (even if you factor in that one limo ride) in less than a week. ^note Per the Plaza's January 2019 room service menu. Even at today's prices and Kevin being a big eater, he'd have difficulty racking up more than $100/day for food (unless he went for the caviar, or had steak every single meal), and that's not discounting inflation back to early 1990's prices. Likely, the concierge tacked on an outrageous extra fee (like maybe doubling the bill) for time and trouble to him and his staff, and thinks that Peter won't challenge the bill or demand an itemised receipt. He had Cedric hand the bill to Peter then in an attempt to see Kevin get in trouble for the bill.
     • We get a quick glance at a few of the things he ordered including 8 strawberry tarts, 6 flan, 36 chocolate covered strawberries, and an entire pastry cart (which alone is $210). And that is just one page of six or seven. Take those and the tip off and the total for everything else is less than $350. Certainly reasonable if he's eating every meal there (plus snacks) for several days.
   • Mr. Hector is definitely malicious enough to try and ruin their Christmas as revenge... but given that the McCallisters have been given a complimentary suite, maybe it's also an attempt to scare them into not making outrageous charges to their room the way Kevin has (see Room Service Bill above).
   • They were at one of the most expensive hotels in New York, so it's not out of the question that room service would be overpriced.
     • Fancy hotels used to make a lot of money this way, especially before the advent of exceptionally common restaurant delivery services like Grub Hub.

Harry and Marv's plans for Kevin

• What exactly were Harry and Marv planning to do with Kevin after they caught him outside the hotel in the second movie? Marv implies they could drown him, and Harry says something about keeping him on ice in a subway tunnel. It sounds like they were planning to hide and tie him up somewhere in a subway until after their toy store heist, at which point they would come back and kill him.
  • Throw the kid into the river for Marv. Throw him onto railroad tracks and have him run over or electrocuted by the third rail for Harry. Very nice men.

Murder Methods

• Relating to the above theory, why did Harry and Marv drag Kevin to the subway to kill him? They already had a nice, secluded area to strangle or stomp him to death at. It might be surveilled, but then they've already been caught on tape, might as well take full advantage. Even if they didn't cross the lady, it's unlikely that the station would be empty enough that no one would see them or that Kevin would be so quiet when his life is in immediate danger.
  • Leaving the body in a subway tunnel after killing him there would not only hide the murder, but put the body somewhere it would not likely be found for days, if not weeks.

Harry and Marv's break-out

• How did Harry and Marv get regular clothes after breaking out of prison? And where did Harry get a gun?
  • They stole them. They are thieves, after all.
  • Or bought them at a store after stealing money. Not like you need a background check or Walmart keep lists of escapees for cashiers to look for.
  • My guess is they stole the gun off a guard during the riot.

The Bird Lady's Residence

• Is anyone aware that bird lady lives above the concert hall?
  • Either the staff or owner of the hall thought she was okay to stay there, or they probably don't care that much.
    • The owner of Carnegie Hall? Aka the City of New York?
  • In the novelisation (which was based on the original screenplay), Kevin asks her if she lives above the concert hall; she replies that she doesn't, and that she has an apartment. Given that she's never explicitly stated to be homeless, it's possible that this is still canon to the movie (though it does raise the question of how she pays for said apartment).
  • Apartments in NYC are often what we elsewhere would call condos: for purchase, not rent. We also don't know how long she's been feeding the pigeons or if she had money beforehand.

Robbing Duncan's Toy Chest after blabbing

• Harry and Marv may be stupid, but they should have known better than to go through with the robbery. Marv told Kevin the plan when they had him captured, which Harry knew was dumb, but Marv rationalised it by saying that they were going to kill him before he could tell anyone. So even Marv is bright enough to know that they can't have anyone alive and out there in New York who knows their plan. Then Kevin escapes. And they go ahead and rob the joint anyway. At least in the first movie they knew they'd be dealing with just a kid, didn't know the kid knew they were coming, and thought they could scare him into cooperating. With Kevin out there knowing exactly when and where they will commit a robbery, why wouldn't they assume he'll call the cops?
  • Because they honestly thought (hoped) that he had gotten lost in Central Park or better yet, died in there ("grown men go into the park and don't leave alive- good luck kid"). Marv was stupid enough to tell him the plan in the first place, so him saying it wouldn't matter isn't really a great feat of his intellect, so yes they really are just THAT dumb, not to mention greedy and desperate. There was also only a few hours between that scene and the actual robbery, so they may have decided just to risk it. As it happens, Kevin didn't rat them out to the police, so they nearly got away with it regardless. You could also argue that Harry and Marv had no idea Kevin even knew what or where Duncan's Toy Chest even was, and he might not have remembered the name if he had.
  • They're lucky Kevin didn't do something like go to the cops to report a tip (which would leave the police to stake out the toy store and swoop in to catch them as they walked out), and the reason he didn't go to the cops was because the Plaza staff had figured out he was using his dad's stolen credit card and for all Kevin knows, the concierge had indeed filed a police report with a description of Kevin when they responded to the call about the whole "insane guest with a gun" charade Kevin pulled with Angels With Even Filthier Souls.
  • See my question further down the page about how him doing that prank would likely have led to a SWAT team response, and not easily brushed off by the police in the aftermath.
  • As seen in the first film, the pair (especially Marv) aren't the best and brightest of criminals. They also may have staked their continued escape on that haul and (with Kevin throwing a wrench in their plans) felt the need to get out of New York fast.
  • And another indicator of their stupidity: those bags full of cash would never have passed airline security (and so neither would the duo), they may as well have been full of gargantuan crimson flags. They surely don't have the means or the intelligence to launder it, especially given their escape was set up as a hasty getaway.
  • I think it may be reasonable to expect that they do have that means. Because in the first film you would at least need a fence to feel reasonably safe in selling on those stolen goods. They must have been living their criminal lifestyle for a while, with their particular MO, so that would necessitate a fence so that they could get money back to actually live on (and not all of the houses they hit will actually have petty cash on hand). If their fence knew launderers, and if one of those launderers were still happy to work with escaped convicts, then Harry would probably see the sense in doing that. Marv thought they'd just jump on a flight to Rio pretty much immediately, but that tracks because he's the (even) stupider one. After the laundering, they'd take their chances with fake passports, either on a plane or perhaps by acquiring a car one way or another and taking a slow, land route into Latin America.

Home to Hotel timeline

• The McCallister family woke up at 8AM. When Kevin checks in at the Plaza Hotel, the clock behind the desk says about 2:50PM. So Kevin went to the airport, checked in, got on the plane, took a flight from Chicago to New York, arrived at JFK International, took a taxi into Manhattan, went to Midtown, Chelsea, Chinatown, Battery Park, the WTC observation deck, Central Park, and the Plaza Hotel, made a reservation and checked in, all in just five hours and fifty minutes (since he would've lost an hour due to switching time zones)?
• I've looked back at the scenes "from the worst god-darn wake-up call(s)" to the flights' departures, and I'm not sure how you deduced they woke up at 8AM? Namely, because Peter botched the alarm clock so you can't even read the correct time off of it. However, watching the equivalent scene in the first movie, the van drivers do indeed say "She said 8 sharp...?!" so maybe that's where you crossed your wires. So let's make an assumption or two for this movie- perhaps the family wanted to compensate for their mistake last time and have the shuttle vans arrive so that they could leave as early as possible (but this was offset by sleeping in again, albeit not as late as 8). According to Google-fu, sunrise in Chicago at this time of year would be 7:15AM, and it has to be at least that early because there is daylight in the scene. Let's say in their mad rush to wake up and vacate the house, they're only 20 minutes later than they intended, so departing at 7:35AM; and yet given the further rush at the airport, they are still only just in time, so they only gain 25 minutes over your 8AM estimate. Therefore Kevin has six hours and 15 minutes to leave the house, arrive in NYC and do all the things you say. Another thing which could help is that he actually lands in LaGuardia Airport, Queens (even though the skyline isn't visible from there, but ehh), which means his taxi journey to mid-Manhattan/Upper East Side will only take him 25 minutes via the Queensboro Bridge, vs the best-case 45 mins by taxi for JFK. So let's game this out further? Put the plane departing at 8:15AM CST; gate to gate, it's 2 hours, 2 minutes, so he lands and slowly walks out in confusion ("where's the family...?) at 11:17AM EST. Then another 35 mins to decide he's happy in to be in NYC, flag down a taxi and cross to Midtown = 11:57AM EST. This gives him two hours and fifty three minutes to randomly jaunt across Manhattan as shown in his tourist montage and get to the hotel. Presume that he did not just walk between the montage spots after his taxi, but took a combination of taxi and perhaps subway in between. His journey takes him from Midtown through the next locations you state, surely chronologically according to the montage, and he is probably spending very brief spells of time soaking up the sights and atmosphere and buying a few tourist trinkets. Let's say he kills 1 hour 50 minutes doing this, then takes 35 minutes getting from the Fish Market to Central Park by whatever means he felt like. Then he still has a good 32 minutes to stroll through whichever side of Central Park he was on to the Plaza and into it's lobby. This is a whole lotta assumptions and a bit fudged as a result, but can anyone local/familiar to NYC vouch for it?

NYC Geography - Does Kevin Teleport?

• Kevin explores NYC at the start of the second film via taxi. This makes sense, since he's using the money and credit cards in his dad's backpack to finance this operation. But when he's confronted at the hotel, he leaves behind the backpack with the cash and the (now declined) credit card. Yet, he somehow manages to make his way from the Plaza Hotel (midtown, closer to the Upper East Side) to his uncle's house (on W 95th Street, high on the Upper West Side) and then to Rockefeller Center (midtown, further south than the Plaza Hotel). It's a distance of 3-4 miles one way, even cutting through Central Park, which is a lot for a kid to walk and would take more time than the film implies actually elapsed between these scenes. He could get a free ride once, but twice? Without someone dropping him off at the nearest police station because a little kid alone in Manhattan, scared and with no money, screams "runaway" or "kidnapped"?
  • It's possible he had some left over cash in his pockets which could help with this.

Mr Duncan delivering presents to the Mc Allisters

• How did Mr Duncan know Kevin was staying at the Plaza Hotel? And that his 13 relatives were there too? And all their names?
  • The note that Kevin had tied to the rock/brick was The Plaza Hotel stationary, Duncan obviously assumed Kevin and his family were staying there (which they later do). As for the presents, I always assumed they were just random stuff with no names tagged on them, other than "Thanks, from Mr. Duncan."

Credit card musings

• One of the paragraphs for the Unintentional Period Piece entry for this movie reads: "There is no way that the Plaza Hotel would just buy Kevin's story about his dad being on a business trip, and then let him check into their hotel with a credit card that Kevin openly admitted wasn't his. While the card really did belong to Kevin's father, he was still illegally using it; in today's world, Kevin would have been arrested almost immediately.". But is that really so? I read online that America has been very belated in adopting contactless payments for cards, but it is finally (as of 2021) getting some real momentum. One would have thought that a quick tap of a card would raise less flags than the prolonged contact of a hand-operated imprinter which the desk clerk uses. Not sure if I'm an outlier, but in the UK my mother has given me her debit and/or credit cards before to go pick her up something at the store, either using contactless or actually entrusting her PIN number to me. And I wasn't arrested. So what's the difference here which would flag up Kevin if he were to do this in the modern day? Just the expense of the room and services?
  • The failure of Kevin's plan in a modern setting has less to do with cost and more with distance. Using a credit card far away from the home address of its owner is going to set off alarm bells at the credit card company. In a modern setting, Peter likely would have notified the company beforehand that he was going on vacation and to expect charges from out of state... but the company would still expect those charges to come from Florida, not New York. Either way, the transaction would have immediately been flagged and Kevin's father notified of potential identity theft, while Kevin himself would have to explain what he was doing with a stolen credit card. The end result is the same as in the movie, but modern anti-fraud measures would make it happen almost immediately instead of taking several days.
  • And by modern anti-fraud standing, after Peter noticed his card had been used at NYC (via text), and Kate realized that they lost Kevin again... it will almost surely be a instant for them to put 2 and 2 together, jump on the next flight, and go get Kevin (instead of taking that much longer, like how it happened in the movie).

The fallout of Kevin fabricating "AN INSANE GUEST, WITH A GUN!"

• There's a question up above about why the pizza guy didn't call the cops after being pranked in the first movie, but it was settled- he probably figured he was in fact pranked, and anyway there was nobody else nearby to hear the "gunfire" and report it. But what about the equivalent scene in the sequel? The concierge and his team took the incident very seriously, and they were surrounded by other guests who likewise looked very concerned. We can imagine that nobody there would be likely to return to the room and find out it was just a movie playing back. So, the police certainly would be called and a SWAT team would likely be deployed for something as serious as that (a crazed guest with an automatic weapon could easily take hostages, or worse). What would have happened next, and how on earth could the hotel just let that slide to the point of allowing Kevin's family a complimentary suite, given they'd probably have to compensate guests for the undue distress and disruption of their stay? Also, the police really would have hell to raise with Kevin, because if there's one thing they must hate, it's having to waste resources on a SWAT deployment with no (genuine) justification and only coming up with a silly gangster movie in the VCR slot.
  • Given how Kate chewed out the hotel staff for scaring Kevin off and leading to him getting lost in the busiest city in America, they may have decided to sweep it under the rug and give them cosy accommodations for fear of having legal action taken against them, which would lead to much bad press.
  • Ok, but what about the police's objections? They have no such impetus to go easy on him.

Empty New York

• On another note, New York in the second movie somehow becomes completely deserted, but only when Kevin faces off against Harry and Marv (the rest of the film correctly shows crowds of people). And this is the "City That Never Sleeps"!
  • I have admittedly never been to NYC, but Kevin faces off against Marv and Harry on Christmas Eve. Would that possibly have had any effect on the crowd? Certainly more places would be closed, at least.
    • The neighbourhoods where the action takes place at this point in the film are located in midtown and the Upper West Side. There's NO WAY streets could be THAT empty even in the middle of the night.

Harry and Marv prison escape

• Early in the film we learn via a newspaper headline that Harry and Marv escaped from prison during a prison riot. But since these two guys were known partners in crime (the Wet Bandits) wouldn't they have been sent to separate prisons?
  • These are slapstick family comedy films and not as tightly bound to real world matters such as, the justice system, as say a well-researched police/legal procedural would be. But to give it a smattering of plausibility, perhaps the lawyer representing the pair of them argued that they should share a cell upon sentencing, because otherwise Marv the fool would have been at significant risk in such a dangerous environment without the (mildly) smarter Harry to look out for him.

Harry's loyalty to Marv

• It is interesting how Harry still remains partners in crime with Marv considering that Marv was the reason they got caught in the first film (Marv flooding all the houses they robbed). Marv continues to do stupid things in part two (like telling Kevin their plans to rob Duncan's Toy Chest). You would think that Harry would dump Marv as a partner and get himself a new one... or just fly solo from this point forward. Why such loyalty Harry?
  • Marv wasn't the sole reason they got caught, the primary thing of course would be Kevin declaring war on them and calling the police. The flooding certainly helped, establishing a calling card pattern to link them to several other house robberies, but they could easily be linked to them with other damning evidence (such as Harry impersonating a police officer, itself a crime, to case the houses in the neighbourhood). So Harry is mad with Marv for blabbing the fact to the cops, but for sure it would be a distant secondary concern to his rage at Kevin who was the main reason they were brought down. Now, there's a saying that "those who do time with us, do crime with us". Despite Marv's stupid instincts, Harry knows that he is capable with a crowbar and duffel bags, and that's all they really need to succeed in the Duncan's Toy Chest heist (besides the ability to lay low until it's all locked up for the night). Marv may not have told Kevin about the job if they didn't feel very confident that they'd be killing him in a short space of time, anyway. And it makes far more sense to work with an established partner than to dump him and try to find another trustworthy thug to pull a job at short notice. Another pair of hands means twice the cash to make off with, and all they needed was for a viable means of escape and enough to set themselves up for when they left the country. Harry's plans after that point are unknown, but he could well have been intending it to be their last job as a criminal partnership. Plus, maybe Marv also helped Harry escape some dangerous situations in the clink, and he feels obliged to cut him in on the job as thanks.

Home Alone Three

Home Alone 3's Chicken pox

• In Home Alone 3, the reason the boy is left behind every day is because he has chicken pox and therefore is not at school (the disease is contagious so that makes sense). We see he has some spots on his belly, but that's about it. Chicken pox usually has other symptoms than the rash just being there, like it being itchy, the child will usually have a fever, nausea, and bad headaches. While those last three are maybe okay to leave out, the itchiness of the disease is practically standard for all entertainment, but it never shows up. It's really hard, watching the movies to believe the kid is sick at all. I'm not asking for it to disable him or anything, but a reminder now and then that the reason he's home is that he's sick would be nice.
  • Plus his siblings around around him and then go to school. Even if they've had it before, the disease is highly contagious. I wonder how many people they infected?
    • Then they infected some children who will spend a few days at home. Chicken pox isn't the plague; the whole family doesn't have to go into quarantine.
  • He is itchy though. Mrs. Hess calls him out on "scratching in front of a lady", his parents tell him not to scratch, and his brother makes a joke about the resulting scars. They probably, off-screen, slathered him in calamine lotion and had him take oatmeal baths (which really cuts down on the itching).
    • You even see Alex's mom putting calamine on him before she leaves for work, the first time.
  • Home Alone 3 came out in 1997. The chickenpox vaccine became available in the US in 1995. Perhaps he was vaccinated and his case was very mild.

Alex calling the police

• I get that the third film set Alex up as having called the police so much that they probably wouldn't have believed him if he called when the terrorists were in his own house, but if the police get a call, aren't they obligated to respond whether they believe it or not? If Alex had made a call and they chose to ignore it, only for him to turn up injured (or worse), it wouldn't have looked very good for them.
  • He's got in trouble for it before and each time the burglars had eluded the law anyway, not to mention by now he's realized that they aren't ordinary burglars since they can re-route phone calls and are after military technology. It's perfectly reasonable for a young kid (which, again, answers 90% of the complaints on this page) to simply decide that the police aren't going to be of any help in this situation, and he's arguably correct.

Press record

• If Alex had to press the record button to get footage, wouldn't that have given away his position to the spies when they reviewed the tape?

Home Alone Four

What Was Up With Natalie?

• For the first 2/3 of the movie or so she is nothing but nice to Kevin and his family. Then (after the engagement party is ruined.) she suddenly gets a lot bitchier towards Kevin. Is it just because she thinks he's trying to ruin her relationship or is it something else? I read elsewhere on this very site that the plan was originally for Peter to stay with her, but Executive Meddling forced them to change it. Did they maybe get the order to change half-way through writing/filming and thought "We better make her seem like a bitch so they don't feel bad for her when Peter leaves her?" If so, they did a damn lousy job of it, though it would explain a lot.
  • I think you answered your own question by suggesting she thinks he’s trying to ruin her relationship. Think of it from her point of view: she is nothing but nice to Kevin for 2/3 of the movie, and how does he respond? By ruining a party she’d put a lot of time and effort into, celebrating her engagement to the man she loves. It does make sense that she gets the idea that Kevin is simply a brat and there’s no use being nice to him.

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