‘You can be too old for a lot of things, but you’re never too old to be afraid...’
Every year around Christmas time, I ask my film students to name their top five favourite Christmas films. While there are many films that reoccur every year, one franchise is the undisputed king of them all – Home Alone (although, curiously, Gen Z seem to prefer Home Alone 2 for some reason). While it isn’t my favourite Christmas film by a long shot, it has been a fixture in my festive schedule since I was a little kid…
We know the plot, of course. Kevin McCallister (Macauley Culkin), a precocious 8-year-old, is accidentally left behind in his family’s humongous mansion while the rest of his family holiday in Paris. John Heard and Catherine O’ Hara play Kevin’s parents (O’ Hara’s performance in particular is fantastic). Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern play Harry and Marv, a pair of hapless thieves who go by the collective moniker ‘The Wet Bandits’. It’s all good stuff.
Watching it again this year, it occurred to me that the opening scene in which we meet the extended McCallister family over pizza and Pepsi is genuinely an all-timer. It’s a masterclass in the art of show-not-tell. From there, Culkin’s astonishing central performance takes centre stage, but it is Pesci and O’Hara who produce the biggest laughs. There is also a genuinely lovely cameo from John Candy as Gus Polanski, the polka king of the Midwest. And then, of course, there is Devin Ratray as Kevin’s obnoxious older brother, Buzz. Writer John Hughes has always been great at writing bullies, and Buzz is a truly wondrous creation. I have often longed for a spin-off pairing Buzz up with Biff Tannen from Back to the Future, where they go on a spiritual and existential journey, but alas, nothing has materialised.
Home Alone is far from John Hughes’ best work (it’s not a patch on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, for example), but its status as an unimpeachable Christmas classic simply cannot be denied. Home Alone and its inferior sequel are as much a part of the tapestry of Christmas as drinking too much, eating too much and sleeping too much – the holy trinity of the Johnson family Christmas.
