HOME ALONE

BY CHRISTOPHER HASKELL
DECEMBER 26, 2013

One cannot deny the classic status of “Home Alone” as one of the most-watched Christmas movies of all-time. Written by John Hughes and directed by Chris Columbus, the story of a boy accidentally left at home by his family headed on vacation left to defend his house against pending thieves is now recognizable to anyone with a television set around the holidays. Macaulay Culkin plays young Kevin McCallister, the runt of the family who is constantly picked on and made to sleep attic the night before the big trip. With a power outage making the family late, it’s not until they’re in the air that they realize they left poor Kevin alone. Starting like any child left alone in the house film, Kevin enjoys the finer things in life like eating ice cream with marshmallows and pranking the local pizza man. However, when two halfwits “bandits,” Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern), show up to rob the neighborhood, Kevin’s house is the last one on the list and when he becomes aware of the pending threat, he booby traps the house in one of the most recognizable film sequences in the history of Christmas films. A young boy’s dream of setting up traps, this film is another that follows as a favorite throughout your life, capturing the essence of being a young boy and what might happen if you were left alone. With keen writing and spot-on delivery, “Home Alone” is one Christmas film that will never disappear.