25 Days of Christmas: Day Fourteen

Home Alone (1990)

"This is my house, I have to defend it." - Kevin












What kid didn't want this to happen to them. Being left home alone during a crappy family get together sounds like the best thing ever. You get to eat whatever you want. You can watch anything you want on television. You don't have anyone to tell you when to go to bed. It's amazing. Until you get to the part with the thieves trying to break into the house. Then it gets to be less fun. Unless you are Kevin McCallister.

The whole movie centers on a kid who gets left alone while the rest of the family packs up and heads off on a family Christmas vacation not knowing they have left the youngest of the family behind. Kevin wakes up to find that the house is empty with the thought that his late night wish that his family would go away has come true. His mother, on the other hand, realizes what has happened as her plain is taking off into the air and is freaking out that her baby is in the deepest of troubles.

Kevin makes the most of his new found freedom as he eats crappy food, watches crappy tv, and does whatever he feels like doing with his time. The real fun starts as a couple of local robbers decide that his house is the next one on their hit list. Kevin has to go up against these guys with a house full of MacGuyver style booby traps to make sure they don't get what they want.

The film is funny and touching at the same time as the kid begins to realize that he needs his mom and the rest of the family and that being on your own isn't all that it's cracked up to be. The casting of Kevin with Macaulay Culkin was a stroke of genius and a death warrant for this kids career as an actor. Suddenly he was type cast as the cute kid and that is a monster label to shake off in Hollywood. He would forever be known as the kids from Home Alone.

The two bumbling thieves are played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern and they couldn't have picked a better pair. One is short and stout while the other is tall and lanky. They have great chemistry together and, for me, are a good example of a great on screen duo.

Everything from the music to the sets to the directing all comes together for this movie and it works. You believe this kid could hold up against these guys with a handful of micro machines and an iron. He's written as a smart kid so you buy that he's smart enough to pull this off. The ridiculous becomes plausible.

This movie could easily stand on it's own but there are more of them to see. That's what we will do tomorrow...