Tagline:
A family comedy without the family.

Wide Release Date:
November 16, 1990

Directed by:
Chris Columbus
Written by by:
John Hughes
Produced by:
John Hughes

Starring:
Macaulay Culkin
Joe Pesci
Daniel Stern
John Heard
Roberts Blossom
Catherine O’Hara

PREGAME THOUGHTS

This is the first movie I remember ever seeing in the theater. I was three years old at the time, and while I don’t remember the movie-going experience quite as well as the time I saw Home Alone 2 two years later, this quickly became one of my all-time favorites as a little kid by the time I had the VHS tape.

I literally have not seen this movie in over 25 years. Let’s see if it holds up.

THE 200(ish)-WORD SYNOPSIS

Macaulay Culkin is 8-year-old Kevin McCallister from a rich suburb of Chicago. Youngest of five children, and almost the youngest of a million cousins. It’s Christmastime, and it’s the night before the family’s 900 members shove off to Paris for the holidays. It’s hectic.

An incident during dinner gets Kevin in TrouBle (with a capital “T” and, for good measure, a capital “B”), sending him to bed without dinner on the third floor away from most of the rest of the house. Mad as the dickens, he tells his mother Kate (Catherine O’Hara) that he never wants to see any of his family again.

The disembodied head of Uncle Frank haunts Kevin McCallister to this day.

And he thinks his wish comes true! The family runs late and scrambles to get out of the house and to the airport, completely forgetting Kevin at home the process. He initially spends his good fortune running around the house, jumping on the bed, eating massive amounts of ice cream, watching R-rated movies, and being a general spaz. Eventually, he becomes more responsible: going to the grocery store, doing laundry, cleaning up after himself, and decorating for Christmas.

While Kevin is living it up, the neighborhood is being stalked by criminals Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern), who are hoping to clean up on all the houses that are empty for the holidays. Once Kevin catches wind that these two have eyes on his house, he does what he can to lead them away.

Meanwhile, Kate is alone in attempting a return back home. She gets a flight to Pennsylvania, but all flights to Chicago are booked. A guy named Gus (John Candy), member of a travelling polka band, offers her a ride in their van back to Chicago, which she cautiously accepts.

♫ The Candy Man can ’cause he mixes it with love and plays a mean clarinet. ♫

Here comes the fun part! Kevin overhears Harry and Marv planning to break into the McCallister house on Christmas Eve night, so he prepares a real smorgasbord of booby traps throughout the house. Needless to say, injuries abound. Long story short, the bad guys are thwarted and eventually arrested.

Kevin wakes up Christmas Day to find his family still gone, but then Kate shows up through the front door. They reconcile right before the rest of the family arrives home after having taken a flight directly from Paris. Everyone lives happily ever after the end.

TOM’S DISCUSSION CORNER

TOPIC 1 — Bein’ Home Alone

Even as a youngin’ — younger than Kevin — I thought the prospect of being completely home alone for a few days was an attractive one. A lot of that came from how nice Kevin’s house is; being rich would increase the enjoyment tremendously. I spent the first six years of my life in a semi-shitty house in a trashy neighborhood with the nearest grocery store roughly 427 miles away, so I’d have to make sure there was plenty of food in the house already. No cans, though, as I did not possess the nimble dexterity required to operate a can opener at the time. The microwave was also too high for me, as were most of the items in the refrigerator. I would be limited to boxes of Pop Tarts on the bottom shelf of the modest pantry, which I would be okay with as long as there were at least three different varieties for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

I definitely wouldn’t be trimming a tree that I chopped down myself. I’m 35 and I can barely remember to water my own tree regularly.

I would likely spend much of my time watching Nickelodeon and playing Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES, which isn’t very imaginative. The important thing here is that no one would be able to tell me to stop, which was always a frustrating obstacle for my childhood media consumption endeavors.

I’d also have to leave the lights on in the whole house while I slept, considering the house was replete with scary monsters that would be waiting to eat my flesh and bones in the wee hours of the night. A baseball bat would have to be at arm’s length, and I would need to practice swinging in the backyard for a few hours to prepare as I was, to be generous, unwieldy.

Never mind. Being home alone at age six doesn’t sound logistically sound. I just wanted to play endless amounts of Nintendo, I guess.

TOPIC 2 — Harry and Marv

Boy, are these guys dumb. They had such a good thing going in the beginning, with Harry’s ingenious plan to impersonate a cop to survey the houses from the inside, and Marv’s ingenious plan to stay completely out of it and let Harry do the thinking.

Fun fact: Daniel Stern had to be assured that tarantulas don’t have ears before he screamed right into its delicate and tender little ears.

It seems like a halfway intelligent guy like Harry would’ve dumped Marv a long time ago. Is he really the best he can do? Dump that zero and get yourself a hero, son. The dude’s calling card is flooding houses, that’s not very subtle at all!

So Kevin tricks them that the house is full of people until the end, when they finally realize that he’s alone in the house. This is where this wacky movie, where an 8-year-old thwarts two adults with zany booby traps, loses me. Why would anybody rob a house that is known to be occupied? What do they have to gain by attempting to rob a house blind while a kid in the house could call the cops during any open five seconds? To teach him a lesson? Why risk it anyway? Getting a blowtorch to the head would probably be the end of it for me; I’d move on to some other house at that point.

Speaking of which, there sure is a lot of racket between the two of them trying to get into the house in the first place! Banging and clanging and screeching and swearing! I know a lot of the neighbors are on vacation, but come on now. You would think somebody would’ve called the police early on. It takes Harry and Marv an hour to even get into the house, you don’t think someone would’ve seen these two slip and slide all over the stairs? I don’t know, man. Plot holes abound.

Fun fact: Macaulay Culkin was hit by the van seven times before they got a take that worked.

IMDb TRIVIA FUNHOUSE!

Joe Pesci deliberately avoided Macaulay Culkin on-set, because he wanted Culkin to think he was mean.
That’s not how you do it. You don’t deliberately avoid the kid. You deliberately be mean to the kid. I’m talking tripping him in the hallways, knocking the books out of his hands, locking him in his locker, noogies, swirlies, and pelting him with food from craft services. Then it won’t just be the top of your head he’d be blowtorchin’.

Catherine O’Hara revealed in 2014 that Macaulay Culkin still calls her “Mom”.
OK, yeah, were you looking at Macaulay Culkin post-2000 and wondering “hey, this guy seems pretty creepy with the face and the drugs and the whole Michael Jackson thing, but can he possibly get any creepier”?

If Buzz knew that Macaulay Culkin still called Catherine O’Hara “Mom” he’d kick his ass six ways ’til Sunday!

Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern felt indifferent about the movie’s potential during shooting, so they intentionally gave over-the-top performances, neither one of them believing this movie would become a massive success.
This reminds me of the story about Patrick Stewart who stayed at a hotel and didn’t unpack his suitcase for six months because he thought Star Trek: TNG was going to be a total flop. And it was! A flop toward success!

Many of the shots that focus on Kevin in the beginning of the movie are filmed from above his head, making him seem small and helpless. At the end of the movie, Kevin is mostly shot from below, making him seem taller and more confident.
Fun fact: By the end of Home Alone 2, Kevin McCallister was 56ft tall and pounding buildings with his diamond-studded fists.

Macaulay Culkin’s stunt double was a very short 30-year-old man.
Sorry folks. Peter Dinklage was only 21 in 1990. Jiminy Jillkers Jiminy Jillikers Jiminey Jillikers!

The scream that Daniel Stern belts out during the tarantula scene was filmed live on-set, after Stern was assured by the animal handlers that tarantulas do not have ears.
What a nice guy! Too bad Stern spent the majority of the time on-set giving Macaulay Culkin atomic wedgies because he wanted him to think he was mean.

During rehearsal for the scene where Harry attempts to bite off Kevin’s finger, Joe Pesci actually bit Macaulay Culkin, leaving a small scar.
Nice guy my dick and balls.

Pictured: Kieran Culkin drinking enough Pepsi on set to literally accidentally pee his pants constantly.

IS IT WORTH A WATCH?

I watched this with my 5-year-old daughter about a week ago. I don’t know why I tempered my expectations for a John Hughes movie, but Home Alone is still fantastic as a jaded adult. It’s amazing to re-watch a movie you once had memorized and see a lot of scenes from an older perspective. Daniel Stern and Katherine O’Hara especially look young. The movie gets a PG rating despite a handful of swear words, some sexual references, a child looking through a Playboy magazine, and an extremely violent movie-within-a-movie. Who cares, of course? I don’t, I was younger than my own kid when I first saw it. Kids need to be exposed to this stuff early on, I always say!

Keep the change, you filthy animal.