Home Alone - Christmas Review

John Hughes. One of the most talented filmmakers who ever lived, I consider his groundbreaking achievement to be The Breakfast Club, one of my all-time favorite movies. But it wasn’t just this movie that made him famous. He was known for unleashing what many people described as the Brat Pack films, which featured teenage characters celebrated for how believable, sensible, and realistic their dilemmas were, with The Breakfast Club among them. He was also a well-established comedy writer, as demonstrated in films like National Lampoon’s Vacation and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.

And while we’re still on the subject of engaging young characters, this leads to the second filmmaker we ought to talk about, Chris Columbus. In 1985, he knocked it out of the ballpark with The Goonies, a swashbuckling film now celebrated as a classic for its portrayal of kids engaging in wacky adventures.

But then, they did something even more remarkable in 1990. They worked on a slapstick film that combined the best of both talents, which became a memorable, relatable film that oozed Yuletide spirit and celebrated the little quirks that make people and families unique.

The result, of course, would be Home Alone.

Released in November 1990, this film smashed box-office records across the board, including becoming the highest-grossing comedy and Christmas film of all time at the time. What’s more, it made a superstar out of its main lead, Macaulay Culkin, who would have gone on to play characters similar to his role in this film.

So, with that out of the way, let’s hop forth and take a closer look at what made Home Alone such a cherished film, shall we?

The story is about a young boy named Kevin McCallister. He was trying to make himself known when his family and extended family were all busy with other things. What happened was that the McCallisters, as well as Kevin’s extended family – his Uncle Frank and his family – were all gearing up to depart on a Christmas vacation to Paris, specifically in Uncle Frank’s apartment. In Kevin’s case, he was frustrated by being horsed around one too many times. Finally, after a fight with his brother, Buzz, Kevin was sent to his room, making him wish he did not have a family to worry about. The next day, a storm that lingered throughout their house made the families sleep in a bit and hustle to make it to their flight on time. They managed to bring everything and everyone with them, all except for one: Kevin.

When he woke up, he thought that his wish for his family to disappear had been granted. In response, he celebrated his solitary condition to his heart’s content. However, his celebration of having the house to himself while his family was away in Paris did not last long, because sneaking into town were a couple of bumbling burglars named Marv and Harry, who called themselves the Wet Bandits. I’ll explain why they named themselves that soon.

They targeted some of the wealthiest houses on Lincoln Boulevard, Chicago, including the McAllister home, or, as they called it, the ‘silver tuna’. So, once Kevin realized these guys were in the neighborhood and planning to burglarize his home, he decided to take matters into his own hands and defend his home by any means necessary.

Would he have succeeded? What more could he have discovered during his time having the house all to himself? And what would he have learned about the creepy neighbor who was said to have been a potential assassin in the past?

Ever since I first heard of this movie and its sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, I was drawn to the idea of watching a kid knock down a couple of invading burglars and outwit them every step of the way. Though I am ashamed to admit that it was Lost in New York that I was first acquainted with, before I hopped over to this film. Now, with Lost in New York, I will go into more detail on that film soon. But until then, I can safely say that while I enjoyed the slapstick just fine as a kid and even as an adult, there’s a lot more to this movie that I believe makes this not only one of the most iconic works from both John Hughes and Chris Columbus, but also a stellar comedy that deserves its reputation as a Christmas classic.

Speaking of Christmas time, let’s start with the music. The music in this movie is among the many hallmarks that give Home Alone its household name. It’s composer John Williams doing the music for this film, and before then, he made a name for himself with iconic, trailblazing musical themes such as what he composed for Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T.: the Extra Terrestrial, and so forth, and his work in Home Alone is no exception.

Beginning with the opening theme, the notes in this theme were hit out of the park. It conveyed the apparent charm of tagging along with Kevin McCallister on his adventures. Sometimes there’s just a slight undertone of uncertainty to be felt when looking around every which corner to see what or who else could be around, but it mostly maintained its focus on the whimsy and mischief that defined what Home Alone is all about.

And need we forget ‘Holiday Flight,’ when the McCallisters rushed to get ready for their flight? Admittedly, when I first heard it, it reminded me a lot of the Russian Dance from The Nutcracker, but after a while, it grew on me and became its own thing that fits easily within Home Alone. The frantic energy and urgent notes helped highlight the instinctive urge to make it to one’s destination sooner rather than later, such as what the McCallisters tried to do when going from one place to another.

And that’s just one half of the score that John Williams did so well with Home Alone. The other half was more melancholy and touched on the inner thoughts and loneliness that would’ve been felt by the time Kevin McCallister finally acknowledged who and what he held so dear, especially around Christmas time.

And it all culminated in the classic song, ‘Somewhere in My Memory.’ This song reached out and touched heartstrings with its wholesome melodies, peaceful serenity, and outward declarations and outstretched love, the core values of Christmas time. And it aligned perfectly with the extra struggles Kevin McCallister dealt with, too, as subtly as it could have. Considering how masterful and iconic John Williams’ music was in this film, it could not have been a more fitting honor to bestow upon movies like Home Alone, even upon filmmakers like John Hughes and Chris Columbus, who were both excellent in making successful films before.

But now, what else besides the music helped cement this movie as a classic?

Hopping over to the characters, many of them were delightfully memorable, primarily thanks to the imperfections they expressed.

To start with, Kevin McCallister was a nosy, buttinsky kid who seemed surprisingly knowledgeable about specific tactics and situations, but that did not make him look like a complete know-it-all. Sometimes he was, but he mainly was that in his own childlike way. And of course, he was a little selfish when it came to dealing with his own problems. But look at how he was doing so while stuck in the middle of a torrent, with his large family as well as his extended family all coming together and preparing to go from one place to another. Who can blame him for trying to get his family’s attention, even though it was in the wrong place at the wrong time? That made him feel like he had had it with his family, and he declared he would have been better off alone, without anyone else on his side. At first, he thought it was a dream come true when he had the house all to himself, and he went about it as I’m sure any child would have when it came to having no one to put up with.

Of course, even if his family’s flaws burdened Kevin, they were still good people. Through warts and all, his family was still just that, a family to him. And to have no family would be much worse than having a flawed family, because there’s no telling just how much your family would love and probably miss you, and you with them. Even though it took Kevin a few days to realize it, he still discovered that yes, there were times when his family was basically the best gift he could ever have needed, and that, without them, what more could he have done on his own? Even if he was skillful in some things, there’s only so long he could have done everything else on his own.

He wasn’t entirely helpless, of course, and not just because of his ingenuity with his toys. I like how the more Kevin stayed home by himself, the more he took on regular adult tasks his parents would usually handle, such as cooking his own meals, doing his own laundry, and doing his own dishes. Evidently, he picked up on how to take care of himself after settling into his house for a while.

As for the McAllisters themselves, some members stood out from the large crowd that the family was.

For starters, let’s look at the unseemliest members of the family: Buzz McAllister and Uncle Frank.

With Buzz, he seemed to have always had it in for Kevin. And yes, he was a bit of a bully to Kevin, especially when he wolfed down the last slices of cheese pizza when Kevin was just on the verge of having them. (Yeah…I have some things to say about that.) However, when you put together how ornery Kevin usually was despite half of it being out of desperation to be recognized by his family, it got to the point where Buzz was surprisingly on the same page as Kevin in terms of being both natural and flawed in his own way, even if he was automatically made to look like the yin to Kevin’s yang. Even though Buzz tended to go too far in harassing Kevin, some of his problems with Kevin were so not wrong that it didn’t entirely paint him as just a straight-up bad guy, just someone who tended to horse Kevin around, sometimes understandably, sometimes excessively.

Uncle Frank was no angel either, and he tended to be pretty cantankerous with his remarks and opinions, but I’d say he’s more cranky than cruel. All in all, he has made some pretty out-of-line comments regarding what or who was very important. And yes, he was a little bit of a mooch when it came to what he admired, such as the crystals he found in his first-class seat on the Paris flight. However, when you consider that the entire trip to Paris was also so he could have treated them to the time of their lives in his apartment in Paris, there’s a sense that there was a level of sensibility and lavishness with Frank that we don’t see expressed as often as we see his more unethical sides. And when we hear more from Kate about Uncle Frank's family background, as she told the alleged policeman…

My husband's brother transferred to Paris last summer and both of his kids are still going to school here, and I guess he missed the whole family. He's giving us all this trip to Paris for the holidays, so we can be together.

…that made me reevaluate Uncle Frank and his family more than I anticipated. That convinced me that, for all of Uncle Frank’s thorniness, there might have been more of a decent uncle than he was letting on.

I can understand why some people might have beef with these characters, but they were so enjoyably jerky that I didn’t mind.

As for the others, they went about their own business as usual. There wasn’t very much written about them, but there didn’t need to be, as long as their personalities were enough to clue me into what they were like, depending on how they tolerated Kevin. I would say they were tolerably natural. However, they weren’t without some standout moments of their own, either.

Megan, for example, seemed to be the most concerned for Kevin, even though she chewed him out for thinking more about himself when everyone else had their own problems to deal with. Her concern for him was most evident when she and everyone else realized they had left Kevin at home by accident. And it did lead to one conversation between her and Buzz about whether they should be panicking about Kevin’s welfare if he had the house to himself. To which Megan thought something could happen to him. Buzz, on the other hand, besides just being arrogant with and exhausted from Kevin’s nagging, thought that Kevin could have used a little experience with the real world on top of believing that where they lived, it would not have been possible for Kevin to end up in any trouble, or so he thought. For all his insensitivities, scenes like this show Buzz in a more human light than usual, and you’d be amazed at what wonders that would do to characters like him.

Jeff and Linnie were basically your everyday older brother and sister who tended to nag at each other when they were not putting up with Kevin’s antics.

Peter McAllister felt like the more level-headed parent, constantly reacting to certain goings-on as coolly as possible and feeling like a sensible partner and father.

And that leaves us with Kate McCallister, who I found just impressive.

Kate McCallister was also as responsible as could be for whatever went on with her husband, her family, and everything else, as far as heading out to Paris was concerned. And at first, she didn’t think much of Kevin when she was busy thinking of everything else. But when it finally dawned on her just what a massive mistake she made in leaving Kevin home all by himself, her commitment to not stick around in Paris, but rather to hop back home however she could have until she reached Kevin, was just a true testament to her character, not just as an individual, but most importantly, as Kevin’s mother. That tells me that for all her priorities, some of which took her attention away from others who would have relied on her, she was still committed to being there for whoever mattered the most to her, as she demonstrated by trying to make it home to Kevin before she felt like she had left him home for too long.

And let me elaborate a bit on the McCallisters as a family.

Considering how the McCallisters had so many other little things to worry about for their trip to Paris and how they each had a lot on their plate, I would say that, despite their imperfections, they felt like a regular family. While Uncle Frank tended to be pretty stingy, most of it ranged from not very harmful to very funny. If the Parkers from A Christmas Story felt generally homely, the McCallisters seemed generally low-key, but with some lavish aspects to them.

These people had their flaws, but never to the point where they’d paint them as too dysfunctional as a family. Besides, the Wheeler parents from Stranger Things? That’s dysfunctionality for you. I’m just saying because I find these people too easy-going and commonsensical for me to dismiss them as anything less than that, not just because of how they were written, but also because of all the little problems they had to juggle with at the time. You can’t entirely blame them for giving Kevin the cold shoulder, mostly because they might not have meant to.

Of course, while I wouldn’t say that there was nothing memorable about Uncle Frank’s side of the family, outside of Terrie Snell, who I remember so well as Aunt Leslie, one of the more subtle knockouts from this family would be Fuller, played by Macaulay Culkin’s younger brother, Kieran Culkin, who you would eventually recognize from such works as Succession. What made this character stand out was that he always carried a can of soda, with it being said that he was such a fluent drinker that it’d leave him with almost no bladder control; by the time he went to bed, he would have practically guaranteed to wet it because he drank so much. That kind of subtle oddity with Fuller is what made him so subtly humorous.

Some of the other supporting characters were memorable in their own way, too.

And of course, the whole idea of Old Man Marley was very engaging.

He was a generally mysterious character whose intimidating complexion as an alleged assassin wigged Kevin, Buzz, and some of their cousins out because of what people in the neighborhood said he had done, which, according to Buzz, may have been nothing short of infamous and discriminatory. The first few times he was shown in the movie, he was portrayed as a conniving, really dangerous bad guy who could easily have lunged for the kill if anyone unfortunate enough had given in to the wrong circumstances or been at the wrong place at the wrong time. Even John Williams' music reflected that every time he came on screen.

But it was not until he met Kevin at the church that we’d see the real him. By the time his true personality was shown, however, it suddenly painted him more in a tragic light, for just like Kevin and his family, he too got into an argument with his family, wishing to spend the rest of his life on his own, particularly from his son, which only ended up putting him also on the same page as Kevin. How far would he have gone to express his disinterest in his family, and whether he really did not care about them at all, or if certain instincts in him tell them otherwise, especially as far as his granddaughter was concerned?

For a while, when I was younger, I thought Buzz made up the story just to paint him as a scary guy to some of the more impressionable kids, especially Kevin. Of course, since what Old Man Marley was said to have done was common knowledge, the whole portrait of this character throughout the first half of the movie served as the consequences of local neighborhood gossip.

The Murphys, the McCallisters’ neighbors, did not appear at all throughout the movie, aside from being away in Florida.

Mitch Murphy, on the other hand? When he showed up, outside of being mistaken for Kevin, I found it humorous how much of a brainiac he was, especially when you listen to all the questions he asked random airline carriers. Whereas Kevin McCallister was a bright kind of intelligent, Mitch Murphy was more of an awkward kind of intelligent, albeit in such a wry fashion that it's hard for me not to be charmed by it or get a chuckle out of it. While his perusal through the McCallisters’ luggage may raise some eyebrows, something about it felt like it was borne out of childlike fascinations. If he had taken some stuff out of the luggage, he would have looked like a third Wet Bandit. But, as he was, since all he did was rummage through, or rather just look at, what the McCallisters carried with them with fascination, I think it’s just the right amount of childlike mischief.

And speaking of which, that leaves us with the Wet Bandits themselves, Marv and Harry.

Harry, the leader of the duo, always felt unnerving as a mastermind when it came to targeting the right houses to rob. And what’s scary is that the first time he was on screen, he showed up as a police officer in disguise. He went around each house double-checking with the families who were going away on their Christmas vacations and making sure that he enacted the proper precautions necessary to keep the houses locked up, when really, what he meant to do was get the knowhow on know how the houses would’ve been locked up and when their Christmas lights lit up straight from the horses’ mouths so he and Marv could’ve lunged into the houses and rob them from under everyone else’s noses. We see precisely how much they meant business when we see the poor Murphys’ house robbed and trashed by them that way. And by the time Kevin McCallister came running along, Harry’s tolerance of him, ranging from dismissing him as just some unknowledgeable kid to suddenly finding him to be a threat when he had more than one trick up his sleeve, would have reminded you of just what made Harry such an intimidating bad guy.

As for his sidekick, Marv, he was also intimidating, but at the same time, he was more of a slight klutz by comparison. He went along with Harry’s ideas and threw out some harebrained ideas that Harry was quick to dismiss as generally foolish or insignificant. So, it made him round out the whole brains-and-no-brains dynamic that concerned this duo. Obviously, he's a crook, but he’s a generally dim-witted kind of crook.

I think the biggest case to argue for that would be how he wrecked the homes that he and Harry robbed. At the end of their robbery of whatever house they hit, he stuffed the kitchen sinks full of towels or paper towels and left the sinks on until they flooded the house. As Marv said to Harry,

Harry, it's our calling card. All the great ones leave their mark. We are the Wet Bandits.

Harry, of course, thought of it as a reckless idea. Once his and Harry's misadventures with Kevin came to an end, it's become clear that what Marv thought would have instilled fear from the general populace about their reputation was anything but. As one of the police officers said to them as they caught him,

Nice move, always leaving the water running. Now we know each and every house that you hit.

In other words, what Marv thought was a prime example of a ‘calling card’ ended up being a dead giveaway instead.

While the characters were interesting enough on their own on paper, let’s hop over to the actors, because they’re the ones who provided the most meat to the movie.

Catherine O’Hara owned up to her motherly role as Kate McCallister. You can tell she had a lot on her shoulders when it came to making sure everything was settled and ready for her family, herself, and their trip to Paris. Still, she would sometimes have expressed her frustrations, naturally and humorously, as only Catherine O’Hara would. Even at her most frantic or worrisome, O’Hara still managed to convey her frightened tendencies while also sneaking in just enough of her humorous banter to help her feel like a genuine standout.

And while I will admit that Peter McAllister was not the most complex or engaging character, John Heard’s performance helped make him feel much more wholesome and natural as a regular father and potential head of the McCallister household. Even when Kate was starting to feel slightly agitated, either under pressure or out of fear for Kevin, John Heard helped Peter come across as the supportive husband who tried to be as logical as possible about specific circumstances, especially when it came to leaving Kevin home by accident.

The actors who played Buzz McAllister and Uncle Frank, Devin Ratray and Gerry Bamman? They were terrific at helping their characters feel as human as possible despite their potentially unethical characteristics.

Devin Ratray sometimes spoke like any regular boy about his own problems and interests, while coming across as just a domineering bully to Kevin in the rest. With Gerry Bamman, even though Uncle Frank wasn’t necessarily the most conscientious guy in the family, he played his character with just a light amount of mellowness to him while delivering his lines with some slight crassness to make it sound easier to swallow.

In both cases, of course, the actors were excellent at making what would have felt like unpleasant, unsavory characters feel as regular, human, and appropriately flawed as possible.

Roberts Blossom, who played Old Man Marley, was excellent in conveying his little mannerisms that could have been read one way by some people and another way by everyone else. With his intimidating looks, he did hone in on the possibilities that the rumors said about him and his potential killing spree were true, and that he was indeed a serial killer in the past who looked for some new prey to hunt down. And it was not over the top; it was expressed in only subtle nods to the point where, even though it wasn’t proven, he probably would have been a serial killer after all. But by the time his character’s true colors were revealed to Kevin, Blossom portrayed him with a more fatherly essence to highlight that he’s just a lonely man with no one to turn to, and probably became more frustrated along the way.

One of the movie’s most tender performances, to my knowledge, was John Candy as Gus Polinski, the self-proclaimed ‘Polka King of the Midwest’. He may not have done much throughout the movie, but both his performance and his character left a lasting mark, not just on Kate’s journey home. John Candy infused his character with the constant, talkative energy that made him so charming when he was alive, just as he did with Del Griffith in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. And as for the character himself, he seemed like a pretty geeky but very conscientious guy who was apparently a talented musician, but was also not above making mistakes of his own, such as obliviously leaving a kid in a funeral home for a good while. And as he explained to Kate, even his bandmates had some varying levels of family troubles, as if to imply that Kate could have had it just as bad as they have. Simply put, John Candy made the most of his small screen time in the movie and made every second of it count.

And that leaves us with three of the primary actors who gave Home Alone its long-standing reputation as a classic Christmas comedy.

First, we have Daniel Stern as Marv.

While Marv felt like the most unfocused of the Wet Bandits, Daniel Stern’s deliveries of his lines, as well as his personality, were just dead on. He honed in on his character’s goofiness and borderline immaturity to him, while also making him sound like he had a bit of a moral ground when it came to pulling off ideas that he thought were a little excessive for people like them. And by the time Marv was given the short end of the stick and subject to Kevin’s painful slapstick, his yelps and screams of pain as he tried and failed to reach Kevin when not putting up those booby traps were very hilarious and made him enjoyable to watch.

And of course, the scream when he had the tarantula on his face. Even though it was all genuine and out of pure fright, the absolute terror in the screams he let out was just priceless. That always gets a laugh out of me every time I see it.

Joe Pesci, I thought, was truly a marvel as Harry.

In most other films, we usually think of him as the class-A cussaholic, especially when you look at some of the other Mafia films in which he starred. And would you believe it if I told you that Home Alone came only a couple of months after Goodfellas in 1990? That is a complete polar-opposite approach for Joe Pesci to have taken on then. But he was so phenomenal in both films around the same time that it shows just how much of an acting legend he became thanks to these two movies, even though they couldn’t have been more different. Whenever he starred as Harry, there were reports that he had to restrain himself from engaging in his New Jersey rhetoric, especially when he was around boys like Macaulay Culkin. So if you’re wondering how Harry engaged in his bumbling antics, that’s the reason why. But even that kind of restraint on Joe Pesci’s part helped distinguish Harry from some of the other characters that he played.

Because with Harry, there's just such a conniving calculation behind Harry’s MO, thanks to what Joe Pesci lent to his role. He made Harry know just what cards to play if he wanted to take himself and Marv to the next step and rob what he sought in the Chicago neighborhoods. And whenever he put up with Marv’s antics or Kevin’s booby traps, the mere exasperation and outrage Joe Pesci expressed as Harry were just hilarious, especially when he was subject to the painful surprises that Kevin had in store for him. Daniel Stern was already hilarious enough whenever he played Marv, whenever he had to put up with Kevin’s booby traps on his own, but whenever Joe Pesci was subject to his childlike booby traps, that also made him equally as funny, even if on a more subdued level compared to Daniel Stern’s more animated reactions.

And finally, that leaves us with Macaulay Culkin.

When you look at how he played Kevin McCallister in this movie, you can see why he became a superstar. Whenever Culkin played this character, he played him like a regular kid who had his own ways of tolerating other people’s problems, but his smart-alecky attitude got to the point where he became more of a nuisance than he thought he was. Kevin had some bratty instincts of his own, but, overall, was basically just another regular kid trying to make himself seen again somehow.

And for the rest of the movie, when he had the house to himself, both his childlike and unusual antics that he had already started with at the beginning of the film were on full display. Whenever he was sensitive, you could feel his childlike instincts surface as he grappled with how much he missed his family. But when it came to his smarts, Culkin went to town, showing how knowledgeable Kevin McCallister was for his age and how he had known just enough to put together all the booby traps throughout the house and coordinate the following line of attack against the Wet Bandits. And by having it where Kevin would have had to grapple the idea of not only being the man of the house, but also having to defend his house against a couple of invading burglars, then it would have highlighted just how being alone was easier said the done, and that it would pose its challenges that other kids Kevin’s age might not have been ready for. That wasn’t to say Kevin was prepared for some of the life’s challenges, but to watch him try the react to it with as much of a cool head as possible and know what the proper steps should be to take because of it, that would have helped highlight just how drastic things could be unless children like Kevin were prepared for what may come.

And the last third of the movie, when Kevin finally engaged in his showdowns against the Wet Bandits? That never gets old. This was where almost everyone, children and adults alike, got a thrill out of not only seeing some bad guys get their just desserts, but also seeing them get it in the most humorous ways imaginable. If A Christmas Story did a perfect job balancing the heartfelt family moments with pure hilarity, Home Alone almost felt like it put the family wholeness in the first two-thirds and saved the hilarity for its last third.

And the idea that this was all orchestrated by a smart little kid who knew his way around the house and how to anticipate whatever moves the burglars could have made in their attempts to rob his house only added to the humorous aspects of the whole showdown, even if the showdown was mainly comprised of painful slapstick the burglars had to endure. While some of the booby traps did look like they could easily have killed anyone, the slapstick the Wet Bandits had endured ranged from adequately cartoony to delightfully painful. It got to the point where this entire section of Home Alone was equivalent to a live-action cartoon where one character, the hero, always tried to outwit the other, who’s usually the bad guy. But in Kevin’s case, the lengths to which he would have gone to put the bad guys in their place provided just enough exaggeration to paint this whole section of the movie in a comedic light.

Marv gets an iron fallen onto his forehead? That's gonna leave a mark.

Harry walks into the kitchen and gets his face lathered with glue before being blasted with feathers? Huh. Glued and feathered. There’s something you don’t see every day.

And of course, Harry getting his head all torched with a flamethrower until he finally put it out in the snow outside?

I said this to my girlfriend, and I might as well say it again: they don't call him a hothead for nothing.

Of course, it’s only when the comedic slapstick and antics began to grow thin that it began to truly feel like a showdown between Kevin and the Wet Bandits, especially when they’ve been put through one too many by Kevin and were ready to settle the score with him for more reasons than one.

And who can forget Angels With Filthy Souls?

At first, Uncle Frank prohibited Kevin from watching the movie. But once Kevin finally lunged into the film when he had the house to himself, it turned out to be a violent movie, dealing with mafia antics and automatic bloodshed, like there was a reason Uncle Frank prohibited him from watching it.  The movie eventually grew on Kevin, but still.

But of course, besides the title being a play on the classic mafia film ‘Angels with Dirty Faces’, the acting in this movie, by Michael Guido as Snakes and especially Ralph Foody as Johnny, provided the right amount of gangster ethics to the picture. With Ralph Foody, he went all out with his performance, amounting to a unique part of pop culture that has since become synonymous with Home Alone. It was even distinct enough in Home Alone to be included in the Pokémon Detective Pikachu, of all films, primarily because of where it landed within the film’s detective canvas. That alone would tell you what an impact this otherwise un-Christmasy film left within Home Alone, down to Johnny’s classic line, “Keep the change, ya filthy animal.”

Let's hop to the number one aspect that made this movie for me: the nuances. It’s not just in the characters' mannerisms, but also in the plot devices and other little such things that you never noticed before. And the same is apparent from the performances. That's why I believe the actors deserve so much credit, even those who played the jerks in the movie. They performed their roles with such a level of normalcy that they helped me acknowledge that there's no one way to look at them as you watch the movie.

Such little touches help enhance the movie, such as how Kevin’s parents tried to reach out to Kevin. While it would normally have been easy for the parents to call up Kevin at home, the storm that hovered over the McCallisters’ house made the power go out, which caused the family to sleep in a bit, and threw the phone lines to the house out of whack. Even one of the technicians working on the power lines said so to Kate on her way out. That's why the parents try to reach out to Kevin by calling the Chicago police first.

Speaking of which, the police officers in Chicago who were on the phone with Kate and kept flipping back and forth between declaring Kevin’s accidental stay at home either a police issue or a family crisis issue? Sometimes, they looked like they were trying to clarify the issue, but other times, they made me look at them like they, and not Kevin – according to Lillie – were what the French call Les Incompétents.

And what about Kevin contacting the police? Most of the time, Kevin laid low and fooled whoever came into the house that there was someone else in the house, such as when he fooled the pizza boy when he was getting a cheese pizza, or when he was trying to pass himself off to other people as someone else. But that was due to either trying to fool the Wet Bandits or mostly because he accidentally ran away with an unpurchased toothbrush when he tried to escape Old Man Marley out of fear. You can understand exactly why Kevin would have been hesitant to make himself too well known outside of that incident. The one exception was when he went to the grocery store and came stacked with groceries, which, of course, tied back into Kevin's newfound responsibilities as a child left home alone.

But we all know how the McCallisters left Kevin behind by mistake, right? Well, one detail showed that even if Kevin had woken up and joined them, there would have been no chance for him to make it there. Here’s why. When Peter was wiping away the tickets and passports and saving them from getting too damp, he threw the napkins away. And if you look closely in the trash bag, you'll see that what he also threw away was an airline ticket with Kevin's name on it. So once that ticket was thrown in the trash, you could tell that Kevin was doomed to stay home, no matter what.

But there was more to the dinner scene that I found quite fascinating.

For instance, when Kevin came down to look for the pizza, it seemed as if Buzz was clearly to blame. Since he might have eaten his favorite pizza before Kevin could have. But if there's one thing I do not remember from the movie, it's Buzz eating all of the cheese pizza before Kevin did.

In passing, the McCallister girls asked who ordered the pizza, and that Buzz did. So, that makes me wonder:

Was there, in fact, any cheese pizza that Buzz might have eaten behind Kevin's back, and we didn't know it? Or did Kevin just hop on down to dinner and join the rest of the family a little too late? Hence why he couldn't have found the cheese pizza? And since Buzz placed the order, could it have been that he ordered so many pizzas that he forgot to add the cheese pizza, since there are so many other things going on with the family anyway? I don't know.

People say that Kevin was sent to his room because he attacked Buzz after eating all his cheese pizza. And believe it or not, I do not buy that.

Only a minute had passed between Buzz walking into the kitchen and Kevin asking if a cheese pizza was ordered. You don’t honestly believe that Buzz would’ve eaten all the cheese pizzas he ordered earlier in so little time before Kevin did, do you?

And about Buzz puking immediately after he said…

Someone’s gonna have to barf it all up, because it’s gone.

..I’m convinced that Buzz was only saying that to mess with Kevin.

And I think it's for the best that it was not explained how it all went down, because if it was, it would have destroyed the purpose of us being left to our own interpretations on the circumstances afoot. Even though some elements painted Buzz as an obvious bully to Kevin, others made him look like a borderline fair-weather friend, especially near the end. You can tell that it was mostly because Buzz found Kevin a real pill, mostly because of how bratty and a little selfish Kevin could have been.

When I was younger, I was always astounded by how pizzaholic the McCallister family was, especially Kevin. Every time I saw the delivery boy coming in and carrying 10 boxes of pizza, I thought, ‘What I wouldn’t give to be in a family dinner that had this much pizza to go around!’ And if only the total would still have been $122.50. Nowadays, they would probably be floating somewhere in the $250 range. Regardless, it’s wishful thinking on my part. And who knows what kind of massive family dinner I could partake in that would have served this much pizza? I guess maybe it’s the pizzaholic in me doing the talking. Yeah, parts of it may look like they were tied into Pizza Hut advertisements when Home Alone first came out in theaters and on VHS the year after, but Home Alone sure made the pizza look most appetizing, especially at the holidays. That, and the American Airlines advertisements may have been tied to this movie, too, as we can see from which designated planes the McAllisters flew. But that's beside the point.

To make a long story short, everything about Home Alone was just a whirlwind of emotions, ranging from heartfelt and sentimental to uproarious and outrageous. The characters are enjoyably flawed, the story still maintains some of the sensibilities that both John Hughes and Chris Columbus mastered before, the music was sublime, and the circumstances were realistic in some aspects and delightfully exaggerated in the rest. It was just a rocking good time at the holidays. Christmas time is about spending time with those you love, whether it’s your friends, your family, or your loved ones. And Home Alone, though a tad light in terms of its substantial values, offered just enough of that to lend Home Alone its reputation as a Christmas classic, and a hearty, sidesplitting one, at that.

What else can I say except ‘Merry Christmas, you filthy animal’!

My Rating

B+