Classic Thoughts: Home Alone
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With its release on Blu-Ray this week, I thought that Home Alone would be the first of the Holiday Films that I will be looking at this month.
This film, which is now eighteen years old, was the film that made Macaulay Culkin one of the most famous child stars of all time (who in recent years has only made sporadic appearances in independent films).
The film is simple plotwise: An 8-year-old boy is left behind when his family goes on vacation and he must fend for himself.
Of course, the true plot of the film involves the boy’s hilarious torment of the two bumbling robbers (played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern) that try to rob the house. This includes scaring them with a gangster film and the memorable sequence in the third act, where he booby traps the house.
The formula was recreated almost exactly (except in the big city) two years later with Home Alone 2: Lost in New York and it also resulted in two Culken-less cash-ins with Home Alone 3 in 1997 and the TV-film Home Alone: Taking Back the House in the 2002.
It should also be noted the director Chris Columbus went on a decade later to direct the first two Harry Potter films.
9/10 (in addition, Home Alone 2 gets 10/10, Home Alone 3 gets 6/10, and I skipped the TV film).
