Home Alone

Home Alone ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Director: Chris Columbus. Cast: Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern, Catherine O’Hara

Who would have thought back in 1990 that this film would have become an undisputed Christmas classic?

Yes of course, it is crass, silly, puerile but none of that seems to matter mainly because Macaulay Culkin is just too irresistible. One wonders if the film would have worked just as well with somebody else in the part of Kevin.It is of course a film aimed mainly at children and it has no pretences to be anything else: good old fashion family entertainment and judging by my son’s reactions it works today just as well as it ever did.He was transfixed, laughing, jumping excited, basically all of the right emotions at the right time. Today we take most of it from granted, but some of the films inventions (the mannequins dancing in the house pulled by strings, the VHS tape played to speak to the pizza delivery boy and the two goons and all the traps set up by Kevin) are actually quite clever. Once the slapstick comes into it, it all gets a bit Tom & Jerry, but that’s part of the fun too.

And then, played to the splendid iconic soundtrack of John Williams, there’s the more sentimental side of the film which is as cheesy as it can be, but hey, it’s Christmas after all… Who cares? Watch it with your kids and it’ll be a winner.Putting aside all the cynicism, I’m glad we’re ending the year with this.