Directed by Chris Columbus
Starring Macaulay Culkin, Catherine O'Hara, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern, John Heard, Roberts Blossom, John Candy, Gerry Bamman
PG for unspecified reasons (contains slapstick action violence, language, some rude humor and brief smoking).
Naughty or Nice?: Pretty Naughty, a Little Nice
Religious or Secular?: A Few Religious Scenes
Cynical or Sentimental?: Sappy & Sentimental
Holiday Relations: Christmas is Atmospheric and Heavy But Incidental
OVERALL: 2 out of 4
HOME ALONE was on of the biggest box office successes of all time, grossing $285.7 million ($545.2 M in 2013 dollars, well more than 2013's #1, IRON MAN 3's $409 M) at the domestic box office alone and a grand total of $476.6 million at the international box office, it became the third highest-grossing film of all time during its 1990 release. It stood at #1 on the box office charts for 12 straight weeks from November 1990 through February 1991, and it more than doubled its theatrical grosses when it was made available on the relatively new and widely available VHS home release. HOME ALONE's colossally lucrative success became a major factor in shaping the nature of family entertainment throughout the entirety of the 1990s, at least outside of the Mouse House and its would-be imitators. This, in my opinion, was not a good thing.
HOME ALONE is one of the most overrated box office hits ever. If you happen to love this movie, like most people seem to, brace yourself, because I do not, and I'm going to tell you why, but also why I don't consider it a total loss (for however little reason).
Macaulay Culkin became the definitive child movie star of the decade thanks to his role as Kevin McCallister, the youngest in his well-to-do family, who can only be described as selfish, bratty and even sadistic. He isn't in terrible company though, so to speak, because with only a couple of exceptions, everyone in this movie is either selfish, bratty, snobby or cruel, etc., before we reach our unearned conclusion of sickening sentimentality.
The McCallisters are taking a trip to Paris, France for the holidays, and they're bringing with them their extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins. But Kevin is an utterly dreadful child, and in turn, his family treats him discourteously. But when Kevin wreaks havoc during the family dinner the night before the trip, he's sent upstairs to sleep in the attic. The power goes out that night, and the family wakes up in a panic to find their alarms have not gone off. In the rush to make it to the airport in time for their flight, Kevin is left behind, and only wakes up after they've left, and assumes his wish to not have a family anymore has come true. Kevin runs around the house doing whatever he wants, sledding down the stairs, stealing his brother's money and watching traumatizing movies. Meanwhile, Kevin's mother (Catherine O'Hara), is horrified on the plane when she realizes that they left Kevin, and with all the phone lines inconveniently (or perhaps, conveniently) down, she's unable to call home, so she finds any and every way possible to get back home in time for Christmas.
There also happens to be a pair of buffoonish burglars, Harry and Marv (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern, respectively), who have the McCallister house identified as the crown jewel of their list of jobs while wealthy families are away on Christmas vacation. Luckily, Kevin has an entirely unexplained and inexplicable talent for setting up frighteningly elaborate illusions to make the house appear inhabited, and after Harry and Marv realize they've been tricked, Kevin has a disturbing assortment of deathtraps prepared that would make the SAW movie's Jigsaw envious.
It's all for laughs of course, seeing Harry and Marv take paint can pendulums to the face, nails in the bare feet, blowtorches to the head, red-hot doorknobs to the hands, and marbles shot from BB guns to the face and genitals. I don't especially have a problem with slapstick violence (I'm a sucker for physical comedy involving corpses getting thrown around; that's just funny), but beyond the stupidity and cheapness of the staging, this slapstick, aimed to appeal specifically to children, has a disturbing emphasis on the painful results. And it is dreadfully stupid too, with the adult burglar bumbling around with an utter lack of reason, while Kevin reacts exuberantly to his violent actions. He's not just defending his house; he's enjoying the hell out of maiming these guys, even in excess, while they're still down. It's like torture porn for children. And you might notice that the torture porn genre really did peak about the time that childhood fans of such movies had grown into adulthood. Kevin is so sick, I wouldn't really mind if the burglars had gotten a little retribution.
The only legitimately decent characters in this movie are Catherine O'Hara as Kate McCallister, John Candy as Gus Polinski, "the Polka King of the Midwest," who help Mrs. McCallister get home, and Roberts Blossom as the McCallister's creepy hermit neighbor, Marley. Other than that, despite various nasty character traits, characters like Harry, Marv and Uncle "Look What You Did, You Little Jerk" Frank (Gerry Bamman), are the most likable, if only because they do and say just what I would like to Kevin. I really, really hate that kid.
I can't act like HOME ALONE is an utterly unsalvageable disaster though. The production is decent, and even though it's unfair that they've been saddled with such idiotic characters, Pesci and Stern have strong chemistry and play slapstick pretty well. In fact, despite some assorted plot holes, such as Kevin inexplicable craft for setting up mannequins (where did those come from anyway?) and cardboard cut-outs as marionettes for a fake party and such a well-thought out series of torture devices, it's a decent movie, but a bad, sick kind of movie. Plus, it marks the end of John Hughes' talent as a screenwriter. No, his work was not unmarked by the occasional misfire, but Hughes was behind such classic 1980s movies as THE BREAKFAST CLUB, FERRIS BEULLER'S DAY OFF and SIXTEEN CANDLES before he wrote HOME ALONE, after which just about every movie that had his name on it for the rest of his career had an idiotic "bumbling burglars" subplot.
HOME ALONE 2: LOST IN NEW YORK (COMEDY, 1992)
Directed by Chris Columbus
Starring Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern, Catherine O'Hara, Brenda Fricker, John Heard, Tim Curry, Devin Ratray, Eddie Bracken, Gerry Bamman, Rob Schneider
PG for comic action and mild language.
Naughty or Nice?: Pretty Naughty, a Little Nice
Religious or Secular?: Mostly Secular, a Few Religious Moments
Cynical or Sentimental?: Sentimental
Holiday Relations: Christmas is Atmospheric and Incidental
OVERALL: 1 out of 4
HOME ALONE 2. Wow, HOME ALONE 2. Sequels to surprise hit movies like THE HANGOVER and DIE HARD 2 are stereotyped as simply being rehashed copies of the originals, but HOME ALONE 2 takes that to a whole new level. Not only is Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) again left out from a family Christmas vacation, but the film even follows many of the same beats as the first, so consistently that it frequently hits "meta" levels of self-reference.
Once again, Kevin acts out on the night before the family, with their aunts, uncles and cousins, are about to leave on a holiday trips, this time to Florida, and he's sent to his room. Again, there's an alarm clock malfunction that puts the family in a hectic rush to get to the airport on time the next morning, but this time Kevin is on the shuttle vans to the airport. Once they do get to the airport, however, Kevin falls behind and accidentally boards a flight to New York City instead. Luckily, Kevin happens to have his Dad's credit card, and once he realizes he's in NYC, he heads over to the posh Plaza Hotel (which he recognizes from a television ad) and check in after convincing the staff that his Dad is at a business meeting. However improbable, he manages to book the room, and of course indulges in all manner of room service. He even watches Angels With Even Filthier Souls, the sequel to the movie that traumatized him in the first film, and similarly to the events in the first film, he convinces the hotel staff that there's more than just him in the room, using this video and puppetry of his own design. Paralleled to the creepy but actually nice Old Man Marley in the first film is the creepy Pigeon Lady (Brenda Fricker), who doesn't talk much and is covered in bird crap, but is actually just nice and lonely.
Perhaps even more unlikely is that the bumbling burglars from the first film, Harry Lime (Joe Pesci) and Marv Merchants (Daniel Stern), have escaped from prison and happen to also be in New York, in the same area as Kevin. Of course, they aren't going to rob the hotel; they're planning to steal all the money from a toy store on Christmas Eve. Luckily, Kevin finds out, and never the one to pass up an opportunity to deal out severe injury to adults, Kevin lures them to an abandoned house and sets up a few death traps for them, firing nail guns at their faces and dropping them from great heights onto the pavement. Really funny, if you're Freddy Krueger.
It's weird though, because not only is there no attempt to differentiate the film from the original, but there's a deliberate effort to replicate each and every joke with only minor modification, such as Kevin's, "I've committed credit card fraud," line emulating his, "I'm a criminal," from the original, or Fuller drinking Pepsi. It just hits ridiculous levels.
What's so much worse though, is just how less intelligent the characters are than before. Harry and Marv are bigger buffoons, the family manages to lose a kid again, and Kevin has to re-learn every stupid thing he learned from the last movie. Shameless.
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