Christmas, a time of family celebration when we take part in that most time honored traditions, the annual Christmas movie. I mean let's be real here, there's not many genres that are more formulaic and played out than films designed to capitalize on the holiday season, which makes it all the more important to shout out the few that are actually really goods.
Every December I like to indulge in a little wave of Good Will to my fellow man, I picking out some of my favorite Christmas films ever, either Timeless Classics or rare modern gems that deserve a mention, and this year I'm kicking things off with a story of a young boy, abandoned and forgotten by his heartless family and left to fend for himself against a pair of Ruthless criminals determined to force their way into his home and seek violent revenge on him. It sounds like the stuff of horror movies, but in reality it's one of the most Charming likable, funny and feel good Christmas movies of all Time!
The viewer gets a lot of knockout performances all round and a near Flawless script, that delivers just the right combination of humor, action, slapstick comedy and surprisingly poignant and heartfelt scenes. I'm soaking of course about the incomparable Home alone. The film starts Macaulay Culkin, the youngest child of the unfeasibly huge McAllister family. Seriously guys, you never heard of birth control?🤔 I must have seen this film a dozen times and I'm still not sure how many kids there actually are. Anyway the family's getting ready to fly out to Paris for the Christmas holiday, but a series of mishaps and misunderstandings results in Kevin being accidently left behind in the rush, what the mother noticed too late on the airport.
When he wakes up the following day he finds himself home alone, so basically it's up to him to fend for himself. He has to make his own meals and tend to the house and for a while it's party time at the McAllister place. For the first time in his life he's free to do whatever he wants without his parents nagging him or his older brothers and sisters giving him shits. It seems all good indeed, but trouble is on the horizon in the shape of Harry and Marv😲 a pair of petty criminals working their way around the richt neighborhood now that everyone's away for the holidays.
The next one on their list is Kevin's place, so the story gradually devolves into a kind of battle of wits between Kevin and the criminals. At first he tries to convonce them that he's not actually in the house alone, but as they get wise to his tricks and decide to break in anyway he's left with no choice but to defend his home the only way he knows, how by setting up a series of traps and pranks harass And Delay the two men as long as possible. While this is going on, the movie also follows his mother as she desperately tries to get in touch with them and make her way back from Paris at the busiest time of the year ti reunite with her son.
It sounds like kind of a ridiculous premise for a movie on the face of it because it pretty much is, but Home Alone is one of those rare films that somehow manages to become far more than the sum of its parts! I mean for the start the casting is absolute perfection, Macaulay Culkin manages to be cute and likable without coming across as precocious or annoying, he's a natural in front of the camera and so many of the scenes that would go on to become iconic turned out that way because of how Culkin chose to play them.
Casting's such a young and inexperienced actor for such a major role was a huge gamble because let's be real here, child actors can be pretty Hit or Miss at the best of times, but they gotta absolutely spot on with this one. Right from the first minutes of the film you can see him getting picked on by the rest of his family and you absolutely root for Kevin! Joe Pesci was better known for swearing and beating the sh*t out of people in gangster movies at the time, so it was an interresting choice to cast him in a family Christmas movie.
Although it was a surprise, this mix works perfectly! Pesci has got a natural Flair for comedy as Harry and he's the perfect Counterpoint to Daniel Stern's Goofy and thick-headed Marv. John Candy is also in the movie, basically because he was available that day and he wanted to help out, so he ended up improvising most of his Dialogue on the spot and pretty much stealing every scene that he was in. My personal favorite is Buzz, Kevin's older brother who picks on him relentlessly, he gets more screen time in the sequel, but even here he's got some absolutely killer lines and the actor plays him so well, that I suspect he was actually an a***ole older brother himself.😈
The script is nicely self-contained, well paced and solidly ut together, seamlessly setting up things that are going to be important later in the movie and doing a pretty good job of rationalizing why Kevin's parents can't just call the house and sort the whole thing out in a matter of seconds. The thing most people remember about Home Alone are the traps in the big climactic confrontation, when Harry & Marv tried to break in, but what's funny if you re-watch the film now is that most of that stuff doesn't even happen until the last 20 minutes.
The rest of the movie is really just Kevin adapting to Life by himself, giving the audience a chance to get to know him. It's basically the story of a bully kid learning to grow up a little stand up for himself and be independant for the first time, whether it's overcoming his fear of the weird furnace thing in the basement or the old man across the street that everyone thinks is a serial killer. 👨🎤🔪🩸
Home Alone is a classic story of facing down and overcoming adversity and beneath all the comedy Pratt Falls and the goofy homemade traps there's some pretty poignant scenes in there about the importance of forgiveness and Reconciliation, especially at Christmas time. In short Home Alone is a damns near Perfect movie that's all but impossible not to enjoy, it's one of those classic Christmas films, that becomes so deeply embedded in the holiday season, that it's almost impossible to imagine a time when it wasn't time of it!
If you're in the mood for something genuinelyuplifting and feel good to remind you that the world isn't all doom and gloom, then could do a whole lot worse than spending Christmas at the McAllister house.