Home Alone is a film that takes a premise that can be done wrong in so many ways, and transmogrifies it into 99.1% chemically pure Christmas joy through sheer skill, craftsmanship, and the power of big-budget Hollywood magic.
Kevin McCallister is your average precocious and wildly inventive '90s kid who, through a series of unfortunate events, misses his Big, Screwed-Up Family's chartered flight to Florida and ends up alone during Christmas. In his home. At first it's all fun and games, with Kevin indulging in every innocent childhood vice with gleeful abandon... for all of five minutes.
Refreshingly, the film foregoes the cloying "kid empowerment" (at least in this regard and other situations applicable to real life) trend of the time for a Reality Ensues approach; for instance, Kevin is forced to steal money from his brother to pay for food. Things get worse when a pair of bumbling yet vicious burglars target the McCallister home for a—ahem—holiday heist. Kevin is able to keep them at bay and trick them into believing the house is occupied after all through crazy Rube Goldberg devices and the power of Brenda Lee, but not for long. Eventually, they wisen up and decide to break in. Genre Blind as they are, they weren't counting on the film going all PG-rated Saw on their asses out of nowhere. Cartoonish slapstick ensues.
Again, it's to the movie's credit that not even as a child did I have a Just Here for Godzilla approach to the film's over-the-top traps. Sure, it achieves its goal as a "family film without the family" on the strength of its climax alone, but movies that simply entertain are a dime a dozen. No, the film has a rather palpable amount of heart: Kevin's rather heartwrenching realization of the short-term joy of being parent-free; his mother's Mama Bear approach to getting back to him no matter the cost; and, of course, old man Marley, which could have been a movie in itself.
The decorative bow tying this savory Christmas classic together is John Williams' score, which is interchangeably syrupy-sweet and eerily sinister in a Defanged Horrors kind of way. As to be expected from the Master. Home Alone, and its irreverent yet resonant Christmasey charms spirit, is a film that has rightfully earned its place in the pantheon of seasonal classics.
That Gingerbread Feeling™
Home Alone is a film that takes a premise that can be done wrong in so many ways, and transmogrifies it into 99.1% chemically pure Christmas joy through sheer skill, craftsmanship, and the power of big-budget Hollywood magic.
Kevin McCallister is your average precocious and wildly inventive '90s kid who, through a series of unfortunate events, misses his Big, Screwed-Up Family's chartered flight to Florida and ends up alone during Christmas. In his home. At first it's all fun and games, with Kevin indulging in every innocent childhood vice with gleeful abandon... for all of five minutes.
Refreshingly, the film foregoes the cloying "kid empowerment" (at least in this regard and other situations applicable to real life) trend of the time for a Reality Ensues approach; for instance, Kevin is forced to steal money from his brother to pay for food. Things get worse when a pair of bumbling yet vicious burglars target the McCallister home for a—ahem—holiday heist. Kevin is able to keep them at bay and trick them into believing the house is occupied after all through crazy Rube Goldberg devices and the power of Brenda Lee, but not for long. Eventually, they wisen up and decide to break in. Genre Blind as they are, they weren't counting on the film going all PG-rated Saw on their asses out of nowhere. Cartoonish slapstick ensues.
Again, it's to the movie's credit that not even as a child did I have a Just Here for Godzilla approach to the film's over-the-top traps. Sure, it achieves its goal as a "family film without the family" on the strength of its climax alone, but movies that simply entertain are a dime a dozen. No, the film has a rather palpable amount of heart: Kevin's rather heartwrenching realization of the short-term joy of being parent-free; his mother's Mama Bear approach to getting back to him no matter the cost; and, of course, old man Marley, which could have been a movie in itself.
The decorative bow tying this savory Christmas classic together is John Williams' score, which is interchangeably syrupy-sweet and eerily sinister in a Defanged Horrors kind of way. As to be expected from the Master. Home Alone, and its irreverent yet resonant Christmasey charms spirit, is a film that has rightfully earned its place in the pantheon of seasonal classics.
Just, uh, stay away from the sequels, man. Only pain will you find.