The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015. Remaining movies: 236 Days to go: 241
Movie #141: Home Alone
My son really likes Home Alone. Like, really a lot. He laughs and laughs and laughs as the thieves (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern) go through the House of Booby Trap Horrors and time after time get pounded with paint cans and irons, get burned with blow torches and scalding hot metal, and various other injuries by housewares. The slapstick comedy of it actually is funny, objectively, but I’ve always been the kind of person who watches this movie and decries how surely these dudes would be dead from blunt head trauma or at least have several broken bones by now.
Macaulay Culkin is pretty adorable here as precocious and incorrigible moppet Kevin McCallister. I mean, even my toddler laughed at the iconic after shave scream. But he’s also pretty much a jerk. And his mom (Catherine O’Hara — perfect as always) is kind of a jerk right back. I mean, if one of my kids called me “dummy” I probably wouldn’t be as calm as she was, but I’d also defend him a bit to older brother Buzz (Devin Ratray) and there’s no WAY I’d let Uncle Frank (Gerry Bamman) call him a “little jerk,” even if he was my husband’s (John Heard) brother.
I always kind of marvel at airport hijinks movies now, since they would never get past the current regulations for flying. The McCallisters would never even make their flight, because they would have to arrive at least two hours early for international travel. Plus, the TSA would check all their tickets, as would the flight attendant if they got that far. So these movies where people run through airports and board planes on flimsy circumstances at the last possible second are something of a time capsule for a bygone era. But current movies don’t seem to have a replacement for this type of airport frenzy either. Up In The Air deals very specifically with the tricks of getting through airport security quickly and easily, and in Veronica Mars, Logan is able to meet Veronica at the gate because he buys the cheapest available ticket. But off the top of my head, most movies today bypass the airport as a place for dramatic tension or romantic shenanigans or anything really. Going to the airport has become like going to the bathroom in the world of movies — everyone knows it happens, but almost nobody does it or talks about it.
As for this movie in particular, it’s a cheap silly gimmick among lots of them. I mean, I also don’t believe the police would just knock on the door of a home where a child is reportedly alone, not get an answer, and assume the parents must be mistaken rather than perhaps some terrible accident befell the child, but y’know, movies. I still think it’s possible to enjoy the film and its lovely Christmas music and its sweet tale of the old man neighbor (Roberts Blossom) reuniting with his family, as long as you wipe your mind of any and all nagging complaints. That’s what I do. (It helps if you have a gleefully giddy child choking on his own laughter while you watch.)
Viable Option 