Review: Home Alone

The Info Bit

Genre: Comedy
Starring: Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern
Director: Chris Columbus
Run Time: 99 Mins
Rating: PG
Year: 1990
Extras On DVD: Trailers

The third film in this seasonal fest of fun, is Home Alone and is my favourite Christmas movie of all time (everyone’s got one and this is mine!). I grew up with this film and I love it, I hate Culkin but I love this film.

Okay lets cover the story for anyone who’s been living under a rock (or is under the age of 20). Culkin plays Kevin an 8 year old brat who is accidentally left behind when his family go to Paris for Christmas, whilst at home he has lots of fun etc but becomes aware of some burglars (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern) who are raiding the neighbourhood and decides to stop them from robbing his house. This is a John Hughes (RIP) written/produced film (God I hope I don’t have to tell people who John Hughes was!) and its right up there for me with many of his classics. (No I’m not going to list them because if you don’t know who he was and what a legend he was you don’t deserve my time!).

I only have two problems with this film now looking back on it, one unavoidable , the other a sign of the times. First the film looks very ‘dated’ (I hate that term but I can’t think of a better way to phrase it), the clothing and the terminology etc is just very late 80’s early 90’s, second the film is just very stereotypical with the end in that its all just very happy, bad guys get comeuppance, good guys get their rewards etc, which is just as I say a sign of the times in that these days if this film was made the ‘happy’ ending probably wouldn’t be so happy. These minor things aside we press onto why this film is wonderful.

Violence in entertainment is blamed for almost everything these days and it has to be said that with the amount of violence in this film there is no way it would ever be made now (well and get the PG rating anyway), some of my favourite examples of this are:

The nail through the bottom of Sterns foot
The red hot door handle to Pesci’s hand
The iron to Sterns face
And of course the classic paint cans to the face of both guys

Its this violence however that makes this my favourite film, because its done in such a brilliantly slapstick way, I literally end up holding my sides with laughter almost every time I watch this film because of this. The story is a fun classic John Hughes style story that fans of his films will recognise straight off the bat and is quite heart-warming at many times and features some fun little cameo roles (mostly by people we will never see or care about again) but making it all the more fun, Culkin’s vocal exchange with the checkout girl being one such example.

So I leave you with these words about Home Alone, it is an awesomely funny slapstick Christmas movie and I love it, I will always love it and you should love it to. Thanks and goodnight.