After the turgid horror of the island adventure I’m thankful for a Christmas classic, 1990’s perennial favourite Home Alone. This hugely enjoyable tale of the hijinks that ensue when 8-year-old Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) gets accidentally left behind as his family jets off to France for the holidays is an intelligently constructed piece of family entertainment and is deservedly repeated on cable TV constantly around the globe. The premise is scarcely credible - how could a family go on holiday and not notice their kid isn’t with them? And yet, the smart script does a fantastic job of presenting a scenario where that very thing happens and almost makes you believe it.
It’s a legendary star-making turn from Culkin who makes Kevin brattish enough that we want him to be taught a lesson but cute enough that we can root for him when Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern’s incompetent ‘Wet Bandits’ try to rob his home. Watching this as a parent, I’m struck by how much of a dick Kevin is to his family, cheekily shooting off snide remarks like “Get off the phone and make me why dont’cha?” to his own mother. I keep thinking how lucky he is that his mum Kate (Catherine O’Hara) doesn’t knock him out. But Culkin can act, carrying practically the whole film on his shoulders and he does it with mischievous aplomb.
I saw this when I was eight and fell in love - what kid wouldn’t want to “eat junk food and watch rubbish” all day long? To raid your asshole big brother’s room without fear? To go for a toboggan ride down the stairs and shoot B.B. guns in the house? There’s so much lawless, unruly fun in these early scenes but I admire how they also cleverly establish the geography of the McCallister household, introducing the various tools Kevin will have at his disposal when the villains come calling later.
The way director Chris Columbus and screenwriter John Hughes (that guy again!) pull everything together is miraculous and I’m at times reminded of Back to the Future in how every little detail, every bit of dialogue is setting something up that will become important later - from spilled milk, to an escaped tarantula, from an old gangster movie VHS to a shiny gold tooth.
Comedy veterans O’Hara and John Candy give able support, while Stern and Pesci make for one of cinema’s all-time great bumbling comedy duos. Stern displays one of the best screams ever committed to film and the tarantula scene still has me almost wetting myself all these years later. I also love that versatile Pesci did this one in the same year as Goodfellas, proving he’s just as adept at playing menacing hoodlums as he is at being a blundering crook who gets outsmarted by a kid.
The movie’s final third assures its place as an undisputed Christmas classic as Harry and Marv run the gauntlet of the booby-trapped “fun house”, getting injured in increasingly sadistic and inventive ways. So many iconic moments - the iron to the face; the spider; blowtorch to the head; the paint-can K.O. It’s marvellous.
The film doesn’t forget to bring the festive sentimentality either, with the unforgettable subplot involving ‘Old Man Marley’ (Roberts Blossom) a seemingly creepy neighbour who turns out to be a wounded old soul in need of love. I appreciate that this film could have been set at any time of year but is totally a Christmas film, filled with sledding, ice-skating, a Nativity scene, carolling, crucial-to-the-plot baubles, festive music, a helpful Santa and more all figuring into the perfectly calibrated plot. I could go on but you already know this is a good one, right? It’s probably my favourite Christmas film ever. Can you tell?
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