This past weekend I ended up going to two holiday parties and separately watching both parts of the John Hughes/Chris Columbus latch-key kid manifesto known as Home Alone. Having not watched either film since I was a child, I had actually forgotten just how much I loved these movies. When the films were released in the Christmases of 1990 and 1992, I doubt my 6-year-old self had any greater joy in the world than seeing Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern getting ruthlessly maimed by the precocious wise-cracking Macaulay Culkin. It's actually pretty clear watching them now why the first one was the third highest-grossing film of all time at its release, and was possibly the greatest cinematic event to children of my generation. It's a remarkably well-made film with a kick-ass soundtrack that succeeds in taking one of the most ridiculous premises of all time and almost making it seem plausible. So much so in fact, that my friends and I would go into my garage and piece together random stuff to try and come up with booby traps we could lay in case an intruder ever entered my house, which in hindsight, would most certainly have all failed against any motivated adult criminal.
So as a responsible adult now, I feel like it's my duty to go through and see what other lessons are to be learned from these films. This is what I learned. . .
The fact that they unwittingly abandoned their son while rushing to catch an international flight might be chalked up to simple bad luck, but the fact that they did it two years in a row borders on criminal negligence. I'm frankly surprised that the police that the McCallisters plead their story to in the sequel don't immediately call child protective services. I could write a 9/11-style report on the levels of systemic parental failings that had to occur to allow the plots of these films to happen. Ignoring the fact that they punish their children for mundane sibling bickering by putting them in solitary confinement in the attic, they then neglect to even wake them up in the morning, they fail to notice his absence in the airport shuttle or the security line at the airport, and don't bother to double check that all their children have boarded before selfishly making their way to their luxurious first class seats, as they also apparently despise their children so much that they buy first class plane tickets for themselves while completely segregating their children in coach. As a result they can't even verify the absence of one of their kids until they're halfway across the Atlantic.
So how did the film convince my 6-year-old self that the parents in it are not the neglectful monsters that they are? First, John Heard and Catherine O'Hara are both so ridiculously likable that they seem incapable of being anything other than kind and well-meaning (they secretly love their kids - they just need two years of botched vacations to make them realize it!). Secondly, the film makes it seem like the McCallister family is so large and unwieldy that mistakes like this are just bound to happen. Never mind the fact that all of their other children are complete assholes. In actuality, the McCallister clan is comprised of two sets of parents with 4 or 5 kids each (something I strangely never picked up on when I watched these films as a child). Supervising children can be tough, but I've watched enough "Jon and Kate Plus 8" to know that even the most incompetent of parents can keep track of five fucking kids. And lastly, it totally relies on the incompetence of all of the service employees that Kevin deals with, who fail to notice how insane it is that a 10-year-old child is flying, buying groceries, riding in cabs, going up to the observation deck of the World Trade Center, and checking into hotels completely without supervision. Sure, it's easy enough to be fooled by the charms of a precocious, well-spoken child with a plausible back story, but the only character who even remotely tries to intervene is Tim Curry's cartoonishly evil hotel concierge.
2) Large Irish-Catholic families are a logistical nightmare
The McCallisters hardly seem able to get their children in one place long enough to eat dinner, let alone get them all on the same trans-Atlantic flight. The McCallister house is so unruly in fact, that in the opening of the film they fail to notice the suspicious-looking man standing in the foyer of their home doing a terrible job impersonating a Chicago police officer while he cases the joint for a robbery. If there's a better case for the use of birth control, I'd like to see it.
3) American Airlines sucks
For as much product placement as there is in these two films for the airline, you'd think somebody would have noticed how badly the airline and its staff come off. They completely ignore the standard airline practice of making sure that all minors are either accompanied by their guardians or are escorted by airline staff. They're also totally unable to help a distraught mother find a single open seat on any flight going from the sixth busiest airport in the world to the third (which incidentally happens to be that airline's hub). The only thing that can be said about American Airlines is that the Mrs. McCallister is so happy with her service that she apparently doesn't even bother looking into flights from other airlines.
4) Sadistic physical abuse and torture are okay when somebody is trying to break into your house or a toy store for which you have a mild attachment, and are preferable to contacting law enforcement
By Warner Bros-style cartoon violence standards, none of the cruelties that Kevin McCallister sets against the Wet Bandits are anything particularly egregious. However, in a world where people don't collapse into a pancake and pop up like an accordion when hit with a heavy objects, the pain that he inflicts on the home invaders is nothing short of psychotic (and their ability to endure it is inhuman). Of the traps that Kevin sets for Marv and Harry, the most painful would probably include: being shot in the genitals with an air rifle; having your scalp incinerated by a blow torch; stepping on broken glass and rusty nails with bare feet; and blunt force trauma from countless paint cans, bricks, and lead pipes. Assuming that any person could survive that level of abuse, the joy that Kevin takes in it is truly perverse. Really, how much different would it be for him to chain the two of them to pipes and tell them to saw off their own legs or strap them in a chair and start drilling their teeth. Though I suppose they probably deserve it for continuing to try and break into a house that they know is occupied by this remorseless Rambo child, rather than seeking the medical attention that they both desperately need.
5) Frightening, vagrantly-looking loners are actually just kind, misunderstood souls who will save you when the people you've been torturing all night have you trapped
Kevin is initially terrified by his bearded snow shoveling neighbor, just as he is by the creepy Irish pigeon lady he meets in Central Park in the second film. But he soon learns not to judge these people by their appearance. He learns that the snow shovel man is just giving him threatening looks because he's sad and misses his estranged son, and that the derelict bird lady of Carnegie Hall is actually not a vile pitri dish of contagious disease, and that she doesn't suffer from severe mental illness. Contrary to every episode of "Law & Order: SVU" I've ever seen, reclusive strangers that are inexplicably friendly to small children are generally just watching out for them until their parents get back.
Actually I think this video pretty well sums up my feelings on these movies. . .
