Home Alone

Home Alone 1990

★★½

Home Alone is the first movie I ever really watched. I might have been in the same room as a movie playing before that, but it doesn’t really count. This was the first movie I got to see in a theater, after weeks of begging at the ripe age of 4. I got a very stern lecture about how movies aren’t real and I shouldn’t do any of the things that the kid does in the movie. I reminded them that I hadn’t beaten anyone with a stick like my idol Donatello, and thus won the argument. At least, that’s how I remember it happening.

Watching it over 20 years later, it falls somewhere between “embarrassed to have liked it as a kid” and “actually good”. John Candy is really funny in his small role, something I completely glossed over in my youth. Also, the mother is no less than the great Catherine O’Hara, someone I’ve liked in a lot of roles and movies since.

The “Wet Bandits” are more sadistic villains than at first blush. Marv’s “signature” of stuffing the drains and leaving the faucets running is really… just needlessly cruel. It’s bad enough that they’re robbing people during the holidays (and willing to at least kidnap a kid).

The third act bloodbath (with no blood) was much more overblown by my young mind. I thought the traps and physical violence were nearly constant, but it’s really constrained to one sequence at the very end. The violence tries to be cartoonish and light-hearted, but it just looks really really painful. Them still being conscious at the end of the movie is almost as big a stretch as us believing Kevin could in any way clean up the house before his family got home. But I guess this is a fantasy movie.