Review: Home Alone

CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.



Home Alone
103 mins / Dir. Chris Columbus

Okay, seriously people, I know I'm not famously a massive fan of Christmas or indeed of Macaulay Culkin, but how have I not seen this movie before now? It's 22 years old!



And more to the point, why didn't any of you lot tell me how flipping awesome it is?*¹ I've got to go to the 10am showing at Cineworld because you've all been keeping this to yourselves? As luck would have it, this kid-friendly showing was mostly full of adults, unashamedly guffawing away. Obviously, I had no choice but to join them.

Penned by John Hughes, there are riffs from Weird Science and Ferris Bueller, overlaid with genuinely amusing slapstick, and all in a snow-filled Christmas setting. Culkin's Kevin is funnier and more likeable than I'd thought he could be, and more than a few of his deadpan monologues reminded me of Randal Graves in their delivery. Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern are reliably understated in their straight-man roles, and shitloads of visual callbacks are set up and duly counted back in for the final set-piece. The rest of young Kevin's family/entourage seem to get short-changed in the screen-time stakes, then again there are an unwieldy number of them to juggle, but his parents (in particular Catherine O'Hara as his mum*²) get enough scenes to convince us they're not completely heartless.

Funny, warm and uplifting; this is a delightful Christmas film.

Why am I even telling you all this? You already know, it was you who kept it from me.

*³

*¹ Particularly as I saw Home Alone 2 in the cinema back when it first came out, and thoroughly enjoyed it. That's why I don't understand having never seen the first one until now.
*² It's not just me, is it? Catherine O'Hara is remarkably hot in this film? Yeah? Right. Good.
*³ Okay, it's not 'Muppets Christmas Carol' brilliant, but what is?

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.

• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.