Retro Review: Home Alone (1990)

The last couple of years I've had fun reviewing some older Halloween films in October in honor of the season. I've wanted to carry that over to the Christmas season, but just haven't. Last year I think I was just burned out after getting a bit carried away with my Halloween reviews. This year I was a bit hesitant because Blogger is having some issues with their view count, so I decided to wait it out and just do my normal theatrical reviews. However, I did want to do at least one review of a classic Christmas movie In choosing which one, I came up with the idea of letting all of my Facebook friends decide which movie I was going to review. There were a lot of great suggestions made that made me want to get to all of them, but the top two most popular choices were "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Home Alone." So I pitted those two against each other in a Facebook poll and watched as "Home Alone" won out, getting 58 percent of the votes. It was a fun poll to watch as "Home Alone" started with 80 to 90 percent of the vote, making me think it was going to be a landslide decision. However, "It's a Wonderful Life" made a valiant push at the end, but was just too far behind. So here we are. By popular demand, my Christmas present to my friends is a review of "Home Alone."

It is worth noting that me honoring a request to review a movie doesn't guarantee you that you'll get the review you were hoping for. Fans of "Hocus Pocus" found that out this Halloween as I am not a fan of that movie, so I gave it a good beating in my review, which was very therapeutic for me, but a bit upsetting for some. Luckily, though, fans of "Home Alone" can breath easily after I probably made you a bit tense following that statement. I am a fan of "Home Alone." I have a lot of positive nostalgia from watching many times growing up. However, there are some things to talk about as it's not all rainbows and butterflies for the entire 103 minutes. Watching the movie as a kid and analyzing it many years later as an adult do bring two very different movie-watching experiences. Yeah, sure, you might get mad at me for that and tell me to just shut up and enjoy a holiday film, but that's not how my brain works, especially considering how powerful holiday nostalgia can be. I get a bit weary with people sometimes claiming a holiday movie is a flawless masterpiece just because a character said "Merry Christmas" at some point in the movie, if you know what I mean. Yeah, it's nice to have some feel-food holiday themes, but I still like my holiday movies to be made well.

In regards to "Home Alone," if you don't want me to be a bit nit-picky with the movie, well I suppose you don't have to continue reading if you don't want to because that's what I'm going to do. There's some things in this movie that bother me and I want to point them out. I think this is very much a 90's film and as such, there are certain elements of the movie that don't hold up as well as you might remember. Some of these things I didn't care about when I was younger as I simply had a lot of fun watching some dumb robbers getting beat up by a little kid. It's slapstick humor at its finest and that's going to make every kid fall in love. But as an adult, I can totally understand why critics weren't necessarily on board with this movie. I don't want to say critics "hated" this movie, but it got mixed reaction. Even today it gets mixed reaction from critics. Its Rotten Tomatoes score stands at a 63 percent with 51 reviews counted and a lot of those are from more recently. And when I went to look at those reviews, many of the positive reviews aren't necessarily praising it either. There's a lot of average and barely positive reviews among that 63 percent score. And the average score of those 51 reviews (because Rotten Tomatoes DOES provide that stat) is a 5.5/10.

On the flip side of things, the audience reaction was a much different story. Despite whatever critics at the time thought of the movie, this had one of the most successful box office runs ever. It opened to $17 million, but remained No. 1 for 12 straight weeks before it eventually finished with $285 million at the domestic box office, making it the highest grossing film of 1990 and the third highest grossing film of all-time at that point, behind only "Star Wars" and "E.T." That $285 million is the equivalent of $619 million with 2018 ticket prices, a total that's about on par with "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," "Incredibles 2" and "The Avengers" if you need a modern comparison for context. Even when you look at the list of highest grossing movies adjusted for ticket price inflation, "Home Alone" still makes the top 50 of that list, currently coming in at No. 42. So yeah, this wasn't a situation like "A Christmas Story" or "Hocus Pocus" where the movie was an initial dud, but then became a cult classic later. This was an instant classic that people fell in love with right away and swarmed out to see in theaters. Even with that, though, audiences scores still aren't quite as high as you might think. It has a 79 percent on the audience section of Rotten Tomatoes and a 7.5 on IMDb. Decent scores for sure, but not universally praised scores.

The first thing that needs to be said in regards to my opinion of the movie itself is that, despite any flaws the movie has, the entire film is completely held together by the charming and wonderful performance of Macaulay Culkin as young 8-year-old Kevin McCallister. He gives what might be one of the most iconic performances ever from a child actor. And it's a performance that still holds up today. Watching the movie for the upteenth time earlier today, I was still enamored by his performance. When his family is being rude to him early in the movie, I felt for him. When he was having a blast all alone in his house, I was having a lot of fun just watching him have fun. When he was off at the grocery story having conversations with adults, he just oozed cool. He was having the time of his life and he did a great job. Even when everyone around him seemed to be phoning it in or being overly cheesy and comical with their performance, he was still giving it his all. His life and career following "Home Alone" is an interesting tale. For a while, he went the way of a lot of child actors and even disappeared for a while. But he's resurfaced again recently, joining Twitter for the first time and he's absolutely hilarious there, so go give him a follow if you don't already.

When it comes to my nitpicks of the movie, it's everything around Kevin that's the problem and I think it starts out at the very top with the writing and directing. For some reason, his whole family hates him. All of his siblings are saying awful, nasty things to him. Even his parents are jerks. There's a whole lot of ruckus going on around the house, yet Kevin is the only one that his parents get mad at. And they're rude to him. And the idea of them accidentally leaving him at home is not executed very well. I could argue that it's not realistic for them to accidentally forget him and not remember at all until they're on the airplane, but that's almost beside the point. The writing and directing just aren't on point. The movie was very heavily advertised as a John Hughes film because he was a huge deal at the time, but the actual director here is Chris Columbus. He had his big break as the screenwriter for "Gremlins" and "The Goonies," but this was his huge breakout role as a director and I honestly don't think he's that good of a director. He directed the first two Harry Potter films, which are weak in comparison to the others, in my opinion, and that's the best he's got. Nostalgia boosts a lot of his 90's work and his most recent two films, "Percy Jackson" and "Pixels" are pure trash.

John Hughes' screenplay maybe could've used a bit of work, but I think on paper this is mostly fine. An issue with the directing is what makes most sense to me when I take a look at Chris Columbus' filmography as a whole. I think a top-notch director, like a Steven Spielberg, would've taken John Hughes' screenplay and created a masterpiece of a film that would've smoothed out a bit of the rocky edges here. Even growing up, the movie as a whole is not what stuck out to me the most. I always enjoyed the slapstick humor with the robbers in the house. All of that I think is classic and is still fun to watch in 2018. I don't know, something about a kid setting a bunch of traps for adults is entertaining, especially when it's Kevin McCallister setting the traps. In regards to this, one of the reviews that caught my attention was the review of legendary critic Roger Ebert. He took issue with the elaborate scheme that Kevin sets up, calling it completely unrealistic for an 8-year-old. Maybe that's true. But I think this is a situation where you can turn off your brain and just enjoy. If we had to be completely realistic, this would be a kidnapping episode of "Criminal Minds," which wouldn't have quite the same effect. The absurdity of it all is a huge part of the fun.

The other thing that I was impressed with on a re-watch is that there is a strong bit of emotion here, most of which is buoyed by a side-arc that I had completely forgotten about. In the midst of all the drama with Kevin, his family, and the two robbers is a story arc involving Old Man Marley, Kevin's neighbor who is rumored to be this crazy maniac who Kevin starts fearing, especially after his family seemingly disappears. Turns out that he's not a maniac, but is a really nice old man. There's a point in the movie where Kevin goes to a church and is approached by this man, learning that everything he's heard about him is wrong. This conversation they have might be the best moment in the movie and is the exact thing that gives Kevin the motivation to go defend his home against these robbers that are coming, leading up to the iconic sequence that I've always remembered most. Along those lines, I also found it really interesting that it's not Kevin who stops the robbers. He sets up this elaborate scheme that fails because the robbers catch him. But right when they do, It's Old Man Marley who comes in and saves the day by knocking them over the head with his shovel, right before the police finally come over and the arrest the robbers. It's a great moment.

The final point of discussion with "Home Alone" that I want to bring up is the question of is this a Christmas movie? This question is most prevalent when it comes to the movie "Die Hard," which I argue is NOT a Christmas movie. I think there's a huge difference between a movie being set on or around Christmas and a movie being about Christmas. My definition of a Christmas movie is the latter. It has to be about Christmas, not just set around Christmas. "Die Hard" is an action movie that happens to take place around Christmas. It's not about Christmas. In fact, if "Die Hard" is a Christmas movie, than so is "Iron Man 3." When I think Christmas movie, I think "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," "The Santa Claus," "Elf" or "A Christmas Carol." Those movies are specifically about Christmas. "Home Alone" rides the line a bit, but I think I would put it just over the edge because there are strong themes of wanting to be with your family on Christmas. Kevin is initially excited to be all alone, but then misses his family. Christmas music is playing throughout and we have a great Christmas finale. But it's not Christmas through and through, if that makes sense. It's more of a slapstick family comedy with a touch of Christmas sprinkled in occasionally.

Does that effect the overall quality of the movie? Absolutely not. Christmas or not, it's still a fun movie to watch and if you want to put it on during this Christmas season, then be my guest. If you're a longtime fan of "Home Alone," I hope you didn't find this review too harsh. Because I do have overall positive feelings towards this movie. I just enjoyed the opportunity to explore this movie in more depth with more of a critical eye. Nostalgia is a powerful thing that often clouds our judgment when it comes to being critical of something, so I enjoy the task of taking a nostalgic movie and determining if nostalgia is the only thing holding it up or if there's some actual substance there and "Home Alone" is a bit of both. Macaulay Culkin is an absolute gem that holds the movie together, giving an iconic performance when it comes to child acting. There is a good amount of emotion regarding him ultimately missing his family despite all the trouble they give him. And of course the classic sequences of him beating up on the dumb robbers are a whole lot of fun. It's just that it's a bit rough around the edges and it maybe could've been smoothed out a bit with some better writing and directing. I still have fond memories of the movie, though, thus I think it's fair to give "Home Alone" an 8/10.