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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 34.15%
Worth A Look: 32.93%
Average: 20.73%
Pretty Bad: 6.1%
Total Crap: 6.1%
3 reviews, 64 user ratings
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| Home Alone |
by Dan
"The ultimate childhood revenge fantasy."
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While often dismissed as a hack job responsible for the downfall of John Hughes-- and the success of this movie almost certainly influenced his decision to stick with the "kiddie slapstick" genre-- what most people neglect to take into account is that, when looked at critically, this is actually a pretty good movie.The first act is used to set Kevin McAllister (Macauly Culkin) up as a typical neglected child. For the first half hour of the movie, every adult character that he comes in contact with, be it his mother, uncle, or even older brothers and sisters, is in some way abusive to him. Were this a Todd Solondz film, most audiences would be praising his genius if it degenerated into overdone darkness.
But writer Hughes and director Chris Columbus have other things in mind. Darkness for darkness' sake isn't art, and so the sad family situation at the McAllister household is only used to set-up a slapstick comedic affair.
Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern star as two burglars who are casing the McAllisters' neighborhood to rip off the rich folks while they're on vacations over the holidays. Since Kevin is... Home Alone (I swear, that's the first and last pun I'm using. Chirst, I feel dirty even including that one), it's up to him to defend the house from the pair. Without the vital set-up of the first half hour of the film, this movie would be nothing more than a live-action cartoon, like either of its far inferior and nearly unwatchable sequels. However, while it's unrealistic to the point of being totally unbelievable, that's forgivable because the first act established that Kevin needed a way to release the frustration of an alienated child. The audience sees the kid deal with a miserable time, and then gets to watch him release all of the pent-up agression on a surrogate target-- the burglars.
This is important, because in the final act of the film, Kevin's mother, after spending the majority of the movie trying to get home to her son, finally makes it back. Since he had the chance to release the anger he felt at the neglect of the adult in the beginning of the movie, as well as forming a relationship with an old man in his neighborhood (Roberts Blossom), Kevin can finally accept the love of his family, and return it without resentment.
There are flaws to the movie, certainly. Often, the violence is nothing more than a Tom and Jerry-like series of elaborate set-ups that should kill an ordinary man but that Pesci and Stern somehow continually survive. And it's not high art, but it's more than the ridiculous cartoon with an annoying kid as the lead that it's typically taken for.In the end, Home Alone is like a parallel universe Solondz flick. One where poor family relations don't always end in misery for all involved. And if the viewer lets himself, he'll also find this to be a pretty amusing movie.
 del.icio.us 
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=219&reviewer=127
originally posted: 10/24/99 18:38:29
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USA
16-Nov-1990 (PG)
DVD: 21-Nov-2006
UK
N/A
Australia
N/A
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