Well it's the Christmas season again, which means at best you'll get two Christmas movie reviews at best from me, like the previous times. Yeah I would review more but there's so many other great non-Christmas stuff to review. Sorry, maybe next year will be different. Anyways, enough of this intro, let's get to it.
Home Alone is a comedy movie and the first installment of the franchise. 20th Century Fox and Hughes Entertainment did production with distribution done by 20th Century Fox. The late great John Hughes wrote the movie while Chris Columbus directed.
The story is, after having their alarm clocks disabled by a heavy wind, the McCallister family is in a rush to get to the airport to a have Christmas vacation in Paris. During the confusion, they forgot something, or in this case someone, their youngest son Kevin. While loving having the place all to himself, he soon realizes two burglars have broke in. Now Kevin must defend his home.
My Thoughts
One spectacular aspect is the performances from Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, and Daniel Stern. As far as child actors go Macaulay Culkin has the best and his performance in this still iconic to this day. And it's one of the many child acting a lot of young actors and actresses should study and learn from. Then there's Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern. It's funny, I'm fully aware that Pesci has done comedic roles before. Other than Home Alone another that comes to mind is My Cousin Vinny. But it's just funny to see him act like this when he's mostly known for his crime movies like Goodfellas. Then there's Daniel Stern, and if they ever make another unnecessary Home Alone sequel and have Marv in it, they have to get Daniel Stern. Nobody else can play the guy but him.
Now onto the humor. Sadly in this day and age slapstick is frowned upon when it comes to comedy. But Home Alone has the better examples of slapstick. Why? Because what a lot of people mess up on is the timing! Slapstick is not only about people getting hit, but it's all about the timing, and Home Alone has excellent timing. But when there's no slapstick happening there's also some really good dialogue too. Such as "Damn. How can you give Kris Kringle a parking ticket on Christmas Eve? What's next, rabies shots for the Easter Bunny?"
The one thing I never really appreciated about this movie until I got older was Chris Columbus' directing. While I don't have him as my top favorites, I do admit he's very good at directing. And he gave this movie a wonderful look to it. Home Alone looks great.
The last thing I'll praise is this movie speaks to kids. We've all had those moments where we think our family doesn't like us, is out to get us, we're mad at them for a day or two, and we wish we were by ourselves. Be honest and admit it, you had those moments as a kid. Or maybe you weren't pissed with them and you were left home alone and all you want to do is scream loudly, run around the house and flail your arms in the air. I might have done that once or twice as a kid. With that stuff out of the way there's a message to this movie. Where yes it's about family. Kevin does have a moment where he realizes he misses his parents and siblings. But what made the message worked was it wasn't forced and nobody, be it kid or adult, are gonna feel like they were being talked down to.
Home Alone is one of the many Christmas classics to watch during the holiday season. Even I love watching this movie whether Christmas is around the corner, days away, or we just now entered December.
My final rating is, A MUST WATCH!
That's going to do it for me. Come back on Thursday, Dec 12th, for my review of Spider-Man: Kraven's Last Hunt. All in celebration of the upcoming Kraven the Hunter movie. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day.
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