Home Alone (1990)

[4]

Chris Columbus (Adventures in Babysitting) directs this John Hughes production about an eight-year-old boy accidentally left at home while his family flies to Paris for the Christmas holiday. At first, the boy (Uncle Buck‘s Macaulay Culkin) enjoys his freedom, but when two burglars (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern) target the house, he must find the courage to fend them off.

I get why Home Alone is a Christmas classic. It’s well made, anchored by the effortless charm Culkin exudes with his large blue eyes and cocky confidence. Columbus crafts the film from a child’s point-of-view, exaggerating the scariness of strangers and the supernatural horror of, say, a basement furnace. John Williams provides a fine score. The cast, including the great Catherine O’Hara (Beetlejuice) as Culkin’s mother and Roberts Blossom (Deranged) as a Boo Radley-type character, are well chosen for their parts.

I just don’t like the movie. It’s not for me. A lot of Culkin’s performance feels manufactured — I can almost hear Columbus coaching him off-camera to smile wider, show more teeth, now raise your eye brows, and so on. His screaming is used a few times too often to wring laughs out of the audience. And the film is so overly-precious with its theme of family togetherness, it kinda makes me want to barf. Most of all, I don’t enjoy watching Culkin square off against Pesci and Stern, which is supposed to be the whole reason to see the movie — even though it takes an often draggy hour and fifteen minutes to get there. I just can’t laugh at the torture, cartoony as it is. I can only cringe.

The only effective scene in the movie for me is the extended one shared between Culkin and Blossom in a church. Blossom is terrific, and it’s Culkin’s best acting in the movie as well. Other than that, I’m resigned to be in the minority on this perennial classic. One man’s yuletide comedy is another man’s cheesy cringe-fest.

With John Heard and John Candy (in his least funny appearance ever).

Oscar Nominations: Best Score (John Williams), Song (“Somewhere in My Memory”)