Dr. K's Waiting Room

Released: 16 November 1990
Director: Chris Columbus
Distributor: 20^th Century Fox
Budget: $18 million
Stars: Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern, Catherine O’Hara, John Heard, and Roberts Blossom

The Plot:
When bratty eight-year-old Kevin McCallister (Culkin) acts out the night before a family trip to Paris, his mother, Kate (O’Hara), makes him sleep in the attic. After the McCallisters mistakenly leave without Kevin, he is left to defend his home from career burglars Harry (Pesci) and Marv (Stern).

The Background:
A serious contender for the greatest Christmas movie ever made, Home Alone was the brainchild of writer and producer John Hughes, who conceived of the general premise while on holiday. Hughes parlayed with both Warner Bros. and 20^th Century Fox to give himself a safety net should the film go over budget, and turned to Chris Columbus to direct after the latter had a falling out with star Chevy Chase. Although Hughes pushed for Macaulay Culkin to be cast, Columbus auditioned over two hundred children for the lead role before finally agreeing that Culkin was the best fit, and filming of nighttime scenes was restricted to accommodate his age. Co-star Joe Pesci proved more troublesome to the shoot than the child actor, however, as he was angered by the early starts and struggled to keep himself from swearing. The severity of the film’s stunts also caused some tension during filming, which resulted in Culkin being permanently scarred and a real tarantula being placed on co-star Daniel Stern’s face. Home Alone was a ridiculous success at the time, grossing over $475 million at the box office and being met by largely positive reviews. While the plot and its elaborate traps were criticised, the heart-warming comedy, performances, and Culkin gained the most praise. Over the years, it’s been pegged as a Christmas classic, despite sequels diluting the premise with redundant retreads, and is a Christmas tradition more many, including myself, over the festive season.

The Review:
It’s difficult to think of a movie more synonymous with the Christmas season than this one; maybe Miracle on 34^th Street (Mayfield, 1984) or Santa Claus: The Movie (Szwarc, 1985), but it’s a tough call. It’s one of those Christmas movies that’s always on every year and has become as much of a tradition as crackers and pigs in blankets. The film is a whimsical family comedy, but you wouldn’t really know that from the opening moments; when we’re introduced to the lavish McCallister family home, it’s the definition of chaotic, with screaming kids running everywhere, arguing, and their parents being just as bad. They’re all in a tizzy because they’re leaving for the airport in the morning for a luxurious Christmas getaway to France, and so preoccupied with their own problems that none of them notice (or question) the uniformed police officer desperately trying to get their attention. Although they don’t suspect a thing since this was a simpler time, the cop is actually Harry in disguise, covertly casing the neighbourhood to get a sense of its security precautions, something that McCallister patriarch Peter (Heard) really doesn’t seem all that bothered about. Peter’s happy to rely on his automatic lights and locks and such, which really goes a long way to show you how much this unexplainably rich family takes their home (and everything, for that matter) for granted. All the stress of packing and organising such a huge trip means that matriarch Kate (O’Hara) has even less patience for her youngest son’s bratty behaviour than usual; the smallest of his siblings, Kevin is ridiculed by brutish older brother Buzz (Devin Ratray) and snobby sister Linnie (Angela Goethals) for his helplessness since he’s so reliant on his mother that he can’t even pack his own suitcase for the trip.

There’s a sense that Kevin is frequently forgotten or dismissed even without his extended family in the house; with them there, he hasn’t a chance of being attended to, loses his room to his tight-fisted and grouchy uncle Frank (Gerry Bamman), and is horrified at the prospect of sharing a bed with his young cousin, Fuller (Kieran Culkin), due to his bedwetting. In a house full of noise, Kevin’s only outlet is to be louder than everyone else; he brazenly backchats his mother, offers false apologies when he’s punished for acting out, and causes the ire of his entire family when he rightly lashes out at Buzz for eating his pizza. Despite there being plenty of blame to go around, it’s easier for Kate to punish Kevin by sending him up to the third floor, and Kevin spitefully protests this injustice by wishing that she (and all of them) would disappear and leave him alone. Of course, he has no idea that fate has conspired to make this wish come true; Kevin’s plane ticket was accidentally thrown away while cleaning up his mess, Peter accidentally unplugs the alarm clock and causes them to oversleep and rush around in a panic in the morning, and an annoying neighbourhood kid (Jeffrey Wiseman) throws off Heather McCallister’s (Kristin Minter) head count, meaning nobody notices that Kevin is missing until they’re halfway to Paris (and even then it’s a strange intuition Kate suddenly has for no real reason other than a mother’s instinct). Thus, Kevin’s stunned when he finds his house empty, but this turns to elation when he remembers all the awful things his family has said and done to him, and he immediately indulges his every whim. He robs Buzz’s “life savings” (accidentally trashing his room and setting his pet tarantula loose in the process), orders himself a cheese pizza, eats copious amounts of ice cream and junk food while watching trash TV, and generally has the time of his life, all while narrating to himself and occasionally calling out to his family to punish his behaviour. Of course, it’s not all fun and games for Kevin; he applies aftershave and ends up screaming in agony and is forced to go shopping for a new toothbrush and groceries, overpacking his bags and inadvertently shoplifting after being spooked by his neighbour, Old Man Marley (Blossom), whom he’s terrified of thanks to Buzz’s wild stories of his bloodlust.

Although continuously terrified by the old man’s grim façade, this fear is just the start of Kevin’s troubles; unbeknownst to him, Harry and Marv have systematically been robbing every house in the neighbourhood since everyone’s gone away for the holidays and left their homes vulnerable. Although far from an intelligent crook, Harry is clearly the brains of the operation; he cases out each house, evaluating their potential and noting when their security measures, and chastises the dim-witted Marv for his perverse fixation on flooding houses to earn them a reputation as the “Wet Bandits”. While Harry is methodical and meticulous, Marv is loud and bumbling, focused more on haphazardly filling his swag bag rather than searching for high value items. Harry pegs the McCallister’s as the “silver tuna” (mainly because they live in a palace!) and is astonished to find the house seemingly occupied when they go to enter it. Night after night they are dissuaded by Kevin’s elaborate deceptions, mannequins and pulleys to trick them into thinking the house is occupied. Obsessed with ransacking the house, Harry follows Kevin and quickly deduces that he’s home alone; confident that the two of them and their crowbars can handle one little boy, Harry resolves to use force but even doesn’t account for how adaptable (and cruel) Kevin is when backed against the wall. What follows is an absolute massacre that sees the two thieves beaten up, knocked about, and brutalised by Kevin’s homemade traps, each one driving Harry further and further over the edge. Pesci shines in his role as the bad-tempered thief, and you can really tell from his indistinct mumbling, garbled curses, and rising frustration that he was really living his character’s aggravation with this obnoxious little foe.

As this is going on, the story continuously jumps over to the McCallister’s, whose Christmas vacation is effectively ruined by the realisation that they left Kevin behind; though Buzz and Frank aren’t concerned, the fun and excitement of the trip has been sucked out of everyone else, compounded by them being stuck in an apartment with nothing to do while Peter waits to hear about potential flights. Wracked with guilt and determined to make it back by any means necessary, Kate stays at the airport and wait for a cancellation after every attempt to call their neighbours and elicit the police’s assistance conveniently fails. Although Kate convinces a kindly old couple (Bill Erwin and Billie Bird) to trade some cash and valuables for a plane trip back to the United States, she’s forced to bounce around airports since she can’t get a direct flight back and naturally becomes frustrated from exhaustion and desperation. Luckily for her, friendly polka musician Gus Polinski (John Candy) takes pity on her; after rambling about his band, their success overseas, and their own transportation issues, he offers her a ride in their van, which she gratefully accepts. Although relieved to finally be on her way, and finding kindred spirits in the band since they’ve lost a lot of time with their families while on the road, she’s bombarded by upbeat polka music and endures Gus’s bizarre story of the time he left his own son in a funeral parlour. While this makes for good comedy and helps to humanise Kate after she was such a snappy bitch, I do feel there could’ve been more to this, I assume they were only able to get the late, great John candy for a day or two so he’s just a glorified cameo but I would’ve liked to see Kate spend more time reflecting on her relationship with Kevin with Gus and the band and less time screaming at airport employees. Speaking of humanising, Kevin is surprised to find that Old Man Marley isn’t the grouchy killer he’d been led to believe; while seeking solace in church after regretting taking his family for granted, Kevin speaks with Marley and learns he’s been branded by cruel lies and is actually a kindly old man who’s estranged from his family. The conversation helps Kevin to better understand his own relationship with his family, galvanises his fighting spirit, and sees Marley become an unexpected saviour in the finale, all while reinforcing the true meaning of Christmas: family.

The Nitty-Gritty:
Home Alone is certainly a product of its time and is far from perfect, but it has a quaint charm that only increases with time. Nowadays, this situation would be resolved in a heartbeat as Kevin could easily call or message his family, but that wasn’t really possible in 1990. It also doesn’t help that the power and phone lines are temporarily (and conveniently) knocked out in the opening scene, limiting Kate’s options, or that everyone in their neighbourhood also happens to be out of town at the same time. I can excuse this just by looking at the McCallister’s house and their neighbourhood; this is clearly a wealthy area, populated by the same kind of people as the McCallister’s, so it makes sense that the well-to-do would jet off over Christmas. However, one thing I’ve never been able to believe is that the McCallister’s were able to get up, get changed, load all their shit into the airport buses, get to the airport, and still make their flight in less than an hour! Even if they hadn’t overslept, I find it very difficult to believe that they’d even get to the airport on time; the lack of airport security is somewhat believable as things were different back then but, realistically, they would’ve been stuck in traffic, at the airport waiting for a later flight, or forced to head home anyway since they should’ve gotten there a good two hours early. Does this detract from my enjoyment of the film? Not at all. It’s a fun little eccentricity that, as I say, only gets more amusing the further we get from the antiquated nineties.

Although he’s just a little boy who is apparently incapable of doing anything without parental guidance, Kevin proves to be a capable and adaptable defender thanks to his many toys, his vast imagination, and his devious and sadistic nature. In less than an hour, he draws up a battle plan that sees him planting a nail on the cellar stairs, flash freezing the stone pathways and steps, leaving broken Christmas ornaments by the window, rigging paint cans, irons, and other items to bash the crooks, and even scorches Harry’s head with a blowtorch! Kevin shoots his foes in the face and crotch, sets up Micro Machines to trip them, and even makes use of Buzz’s pet tarantula when in a tight pinch. It’s all very amusing and entertaining stuff but, while Harry and Marv suffer only superficial and comical injuries as the film turns into a live-action cartoon, the implications of these booby traps are staggering as many would surely be fatal in real life! Although Kevin rigs his house with all these traps and pratfalls, he’s smart enough to have a back-up plan that sees him lure the Wet Bandits into a trap after alerting the police, only for the two to intercept him, battered and hungry for revenge. Luckily, Old Man Marley saves Kevin’s bacon and the two are apprehended, easily charged with all their crimes thanks to Marv’s flooding obsession, but Kevin is still left all alone and morose at having apparently wished away his family. Hoping for a Christmas miracle he tidies and decorates the house only to wake up and find it still empty. This is, of course, a fake-out as Kate arrives soon after, mere moments before the rest of the family, and reconciles with Kevin. Even Buzz is impressed that Kevin didn’t burn the house down, briefly showing Him respect before he sees the state of his room, and Kevin has an emotional embrace with his mother that echoes Marley’s own reconciliation with his estranged family, ending the film on a heart-warming note.

The Summary:
Christmas isn’t Christmas without Home Alone, but I do admit that my affection for the film has waned as I’ve gotten older and more cynical. There’s something about live-action, feel-good family movies that just doesn’t age as well as animated films, particularly when it comes to Looney Tunes-style violence that turns what was a grounded (if whimsical) film into a live-action cartoon, somewhat lowering the stakes even when Harry and Marv get their hands on Kevin. It also doesn’t help that I’ve never been a big fan of Macaulay Culkin; sure, he’s just a little boy here and he definitely does well in the role, but his delivery is a bit cringey at times and Kevin is so unlikeable in the opening and obnoxious when left alone that I find it hard to root for him. I enjoy the wish-fulfilment aspects of the film, where Kevin just goes nuts around the house and with food and acting like a grown-up while still being a little kid, and it’s definitely heart-warming seeing both him and Kate (and the rest of the family) realise how much they mean too each other. But, for me, the appeal of the film is the Wet Bandits; Marv might be an idiot, but Harry is so alluring as a cantankerous, scheming thief whose patience is pushed to the limit by Kevin’s traps and antics. Seeing them fall afoul of Kevin’s booby traps is still the best part of the film, even if it does drastically shift the tone, and I enjoyed the imagination and mischievousness behind Kevin’s antics and traps, I just wish that we’d had some inkling of his ability to set these up beforehand. He goes from a bratty, underappreciated kid to a free-spirited child to setting potentially lethal traps pretty quickly, which I guess speaks to how everyone (even he) underestimates him, but I could’ve done with this being fleshed out a little since we were specifically told that he was Les Incompétents. Ultimately, these are minor gripes from a bitter and aging film nerd; kids and youngsters will still find plenty to enjoy here, even if the film is heavily dated in some aspects, and Home Alone is still a staple of the festive season despite its flaws.

My Rating:

Pretty Good

What do you think to Home Alone? Is it a Christmas tradition of yours or do you prefer another Christmas movie; if so, what is it? What did you think to Macaulay Culkin’s performance? Did you enjoy seeing his bobby traps in action? What did you think to the Wet Bandits and Kate’s desperate attempts to get home to her son? Have you ever been left home alone? What did you think to the film’s sequels? Whatever your thoughts, leave a comment below and be sure to check out my other Christmas movie reviews!