MOVIE BLOG: Home Alone, a classic black comedy for modern children · 1:16am Dec 5th, 2017
TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX presents - A JOHN HUGHES production - A CHRIS COLUMBUS film - HOME ALONE - MACAULAY CULKIN - JOE PESCI - DANIEL STERN - JOHN HEARD and CATHERINE O'HARA - Music by JOHN WILLIAMS - Film Editor RAJA GOSNELL - Production Designer JOHN MUTO - Director of Photography JULIO MACAT - Executive Producers MARK LEVINSON & SCOTT ROSENFELT and TARQUIN GOTCH - Written and Produced by JOHN HUGHES - Directed by CHRIS COLUMBUS - Soundtrack album available on Sony Classical Records, Cassettes and Compact Discs - Color by Deluxe ® - Copyright © 1990 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
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Ask any 8-year-old what a sugarplum is and you'll get a blank stare. Kids today have tougher questions to deal with. As a little girl asks in "Home Alone," "Does Santa Claus have to go through customs?" That's the holiday spirit behind this surprisingly charming film, which may be the first Christmas black comedy for children.
Forget old-fashioned sweetness and light. Here is the story of a large suburban family that accidentally leaves its youngest child behind when it flies off to Paris for Christmas. Kevin is a wide-eyed, savvy child who responds to being the picked-on youngest of five by asking wistfully, "Why do I always get treated like scum?" One morning he wakes up alone in the slightly creepy, too-quiet house to discover his fondest wish has come true. Looking straight into the camera, he smiles and gloats, "I made my family disappear!" Kevin has the potential to be the mawkish child or the obnoxious little adult so common on screen, but he is neither. Played with great glee by Macaulay Culkin, he is a totally endearing, up-to-the-minute little boy.
Kevin's believable, smart-kid attitude is typical of the film's creators, who in the past have mined this suburban turf with mixed results. The film was written and produced by John Hughes (who made Molly Ringwald a teen-age idol in films like "16 Candles" and turned family life into a bad joke in "Uncle Buck"), and was directed by Chris Columbus ("Adventures in Baby-Sitting").
The first half of "Home Alone" is as flat and unsurprising as its cute little premise suggests. Left on his own, with the phone out of order and the neighbors away, Kevin eats junk food and accidentally sets his brother's pet spider loose -- predictable comic touches. It doesn't pay to wonder how he orders pizza without a phone. And there are lengthy, tangled scenes showing how loving parents (John Heard is Dad and Catherine O'Hara is Mom) misplace their son during a frantic race to the airport.
But in the second half, the plot becomes more outlandish, the boy a resourceful daredevil and the comedy wilder. Kevin's house is targeted by two determined but dimwitted burglars, so he sabotages the entrances, with outrageous slapstick results.
Every now and then we see his parents desperately trying to arrange a return flight. On the final leg back, Mom hitches a ride with a polka band led by John Candy, a sure sign of maternal devotion bordering on martyrdom. But Kevin is taking care of himself like a human ninja turtle, indulging in every child's fantasy of taking over the house and becoming the hero of his own adventure.
He uses gunshots on a videotape as threatening sound effects and scatters the floor with toy trucks for the robbers to trip on. He boobytraps the front stairs with ice and the back stairs with tar. As the burglars, Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern (and their stunt doubles) respond exactly like cartoons. They do not just slip on the ice, they somersault over it. When Mr. Pesci's hair gets singed off the top of his scalp, he dips his head in the snow for relief. All that's missing from these cartoon scenes are stars flashing around the crooks' dazed heads.
Even so carefree and wry a comedy needs its redeeming lesson, though. For Kevin, it comes when he runs from the robbers and hides in a church, where carolers sing and where he encounters the gruff-looking old man next door -- the man seen earlier shoveling his walk and called by Kevin's older brother "The South Bend Shovel Slayer." Of course he turns out to be kinder than Santa. He and Kevin teach each other the true importance of family. Yet even this scene, the most sentimental, is not overplayed. Neither is the ending, when Kevin gets his new fondest wish -- his family reappears.
"Home Alone" does, after all, have its sweet side. But it's a side best appreciated by the kind of ultra-modern kids who might wonder about Santa's passport.
Caryn James
The New York Times
November 16, 1990
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I loved that movie.
4742305 / 4741921
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