Headscratchers / Home Alone

No battery backup, mechanical alarm clocks, or digital watch alarms??

• In the 1980s and 1990s, before almost everyone transitioned to mobile phone alarm apps, purpose-built alarm clocks (and clock radios) almost always included the ability to install back-up batteries; most often "AA" or "9-volt" alkalines. This kept the alarm clock continuously running either during a momentary power failure, or if there was a longer outage, until the battery died. The continuous power from the internal (replaceable) battery preserved both the current time and alarm settings until the power returned. Therefore, no power loss, no clock reset, no missed alarm.
  • So then...given that their alarm clocks were all digital, and digital alarm clocks almost always had functional back-up batteries, why didn't any of the alarm clocks at the McCallister's house go off? Also, how weren't there any mechanical alarm clocks (or digital watch alarms) which might have also been set to go off, and would've been completely separate from the power failure? Even in the late 1980s, many people still used older wind-up alarm clocks, and members of upper-class families (such as the McCallisters) often had digital watches with programmable alarms. Were they all so stupid and irresponsible as to rely on wall-plugged alarm clocks in the winter, with no batteries or failsafes at all?
    • Rule of Drama: If any of the alarm clocks or digital watches worked in the film as they do in real life, then the McCallisters wouldn't have rushed around and forgotten Kevin. Hence, the Doylist view is that had they woken on time, the entire rest of the film wouldn't have needed to happen.
    • Rule of Funny: The Watsonian view is that a family as dysfunctional and generally irresponsible as the McCallisters, wouldn't have ever taken the responsible steps to ensure that they woke on time.

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.
  • These rumours seem more like the thing to do the rounds amongst the children (or possibly even just made up by Buzz). There's no evidence that the adults entertain or even know about them. They never mention their worry about the possible serial killer in the neighbourhood! It would be hard to believe a man would be taken to jail for looking after a young boy who had been left alone in his house for several days.
  • The cynic in me can't help but remember that it was 1990, fresh off the Satanic ritual abuse panic that saw a lot of innocent people sent off to prison, in a few cases for decades. Even a more popular and less eccentric adult would be putting themselves in considerable danger being alone with someone else's kid for that long, let alone Marley.

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 ask Santa for a new family.” instead of reassuring him that they didn’t?
  • 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.
  • That sounds exactly like something my mother would say (her exact variation was "You picked the wrong family to be born into.") Most moms aren't June Cleaver.
  • Catherine O'Hara (who at that time had no children of her own) herself felt the same way at the time. After she became a mother she said Kate's lines became a lot more relatable.

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 same kind of assholes who can't even keep track of all their children in the first place, and who let at least one of them bully others with no consequences. Seriously, even by that point in the movie, you can see Kate and Peter are not the best of parents.

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

• 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?

• 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.
    • This is also why he disguises his voice when he does call them (and why he does it from the Murphy's house).
  • 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 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 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 alone a teenager like Buzz.)
  • The fact that out of 10 pizzas they only order a single cheese pizza is also insane. Half the family is kids, and kids are notoriously picky eaters, there's tons of kids who will ONLY eat cheese pizza, Kevin is not a rarity there. Out of 10 pizzas, at least 3 or 4 should have been entirely cheese. If you're ordering for that many people you're not trying to be diverse with the selection, you do like 3-4 cheese, 3-4 pepperoni, and the rest veggie pizzas or something like that.

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.
    • Indeed; we can only assume that the pizza guy has seen Angels with Filthy Souls before and eventually recognized the dialogue (in fact, there was almost a stinger to the movie involving Harry and Marv realizing the exact same thing in prison). It's also likely that, having delivered to the house before and knowing it belonged to an actual family, he deduced that it was unlikely to be home to a cartoonishly violent mobster.
    • 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 movie; 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?
    • Parental favoritism is a thing. Also, Buzz obviously has a lot of experience as a bully - they know to strike when the adults aren't looking, and they also know exactly how far Mom and Dad will let them push the envelope. Since the whole movie is predicated on the fact that Kate and Peter are not as attentive to their children as they should be, it's hardly surprising that she hasn't noticed that Buzz has been abusing Kevin.
    • 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.
  • It's a rich neighborhood in a city whose name is synonymous with harsh winters. Totally plausible that everyone they knew had left town for the holidays.

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.
  • B. 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 C. 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?
  • Maybe Kevin had courage and put the hairy arachnid into its terrarium off-screen?

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.
    • Debit cards did exist, however it's entirely possible that the Mc Callisters didn't actually have one as a lot of the US were slow to adopt them and remained heavy set on using cash for everything.

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?
  • Maybe they're more successful for their live acts rather than their record sales.
  • If the fact that it's John Candy didn't clue you in that it was a joke, the sheer over-the-top nature of their success vs time spent on the road should do so. Also, it's extremely unlikely that a major label would want to sign a polka band at any time after 1950 or so.

Honest Buzz

• Couldn't Buzz just tell the truth that Marley isn't a murderer and just attending his granddaughter's choir? Can't he even confess that ate the pizza?
  • Sure he could, but Buzz is a jerk who gets kicks out of bullying Kevin, so why would he?
    • Even if someone's a jerk, their parents want them to tell the truth.
    • Buzz is a bully who doesn't do what his parents want.

Does Buzz Know The Truth About Marley?

• Does Buzz know that Marley isn't a murderer and just wants to spook Kevin or was it a rumor and he believed it?
  • Based on his comment about living on the most boring street in American where nothing remotely dangerous happens, he was probably making it up.
    • But does he know he's a grandfather of a chorus member?

What Is In The Dumpster Then?

• If it's not Marley's family's "souls" in the dumpster, then what is this stuff?