12 Movies of Christmas: Home Alone at 35 - The Perfect Festive Film?

Nowadays when I get a couple of hours spare, I barely have enough time to make a cup of tea and figure out what to do with myself before it’s over. Back when I was a latchkey kid in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, however, the few hours before my parents got home from work each day seemed ample enough to do whatever I wanted at leisure. I loved being king of the castle for a while, although a little nervousness crept in during the winter months when I’d return from school to a dark and empty house.

Then it’d be a case of turning on the lights, drawing the curtains, dialling the thermostat up, and making sure the doors were locked – special instructions when it was dark outside, particularly after we were burgled one year while on holiday. That really shook my mum, and I guess the one thing worse than someone breaking into your house is the idea of a robber entering your home while your kid is there by themselves.

I expect that probably crossed her mind as we all watched Home Alone together as a family for the first time, because screenwriter John Hughes and director Chris Columbus combine to take every parent’s nightmare and turn it into twinkly holiday fun. As the film celebrates its 35th anniversary this year, it has become an annual tradition with my two kids as well, and I must say it lands a little differently as a parent! But I’ve also come to realise that Home Alone is just about the perfect festive film.

You probably know the story, but here’s a rundown just in case. It’s the holidays and the large and noisy McAllister family are getting ready for a Christmas vacation in Paris. Many people forget that it is actually the unseen Uncle Rob who pays for the trip rather than Peter McAllister (John Heard) and his wife Kate (Catherine O’Hara), but they’re obviously pretty minted if they can afford such a massive house in the suburbs of Chicago.

Incidentally, Mr. McAllister’s means of earning a living has become a source of popular speculation online. Although the novelisation of the film vaguely asserts that he’s a “businessman” and Kate is a “fashion designer,” a common meme posits another solution:

So the house is bustling with extended family (Garry Bamman is a hoot as cheap and crass Uncle Frank) and snotty kids on the eve of their flight to Europe. Pizzas are delivered and a cop with a sparkly gold tooth (Joe Pesci) drops by to advise the McAllisters to secure their home properly while they’re away.

The cheeky youngest McAllister child, Kevin (Macaulay Culkin), finally snaps after the older kids relentlessly pick on him and accidentally spoils dinner. As punishment, he’s sent to bed early in the attic bedroom, but not before he petulantly wishes his family away.

Overnight, the power lines go down, causing the McAllisters to miss their alarms and oversleep. Now in a mad dash to make their flight, there’s a cock-up on the head count and Kevin gets left behind. When he awakes, it appears that his wish has come true – his family has vanished and he has the house all to himself.

He’s loving it at first as the movie goes into wish-fulfilment mode. Kevin now has the chance to do all the things he couldn’t do with the others around,  like gorge on junk food, watch violent gangster movies (“Keep the change, ya filthy animal!”), and rummage through his big brother’s private stuff.

But he’s still a child prone to irrational fears, like the growling furnace in the basement and his lonely elderly neighbour, Old Man Marley (Roberts Blossom), who has been assigned a sinister urban legend by the local kids. Meanwhile, Kevin’s parents have realised they’ve left him home alone and Kate spends the rest of the film frantically trying to get back to him.

As it turns out, Kevin does have something to worry about. That friendly cop from earlier turns out to be Harry, one half of a pair of bumbling burglars dubbed the “Wet Bandits” by his dim-witted partner Marv (Daniel Stern). They’ve already knocked over several homes in the area and the McAllister house is on their to-do list. 

Despite Kevin’s best efforts to make it look like he’s not left unattended, the crooks discover his ruse and decide that a young boy won’t present too much of a problem. But Kevin is far more resourceful than they give him credit for and he prepares for the home invasion by booby-trapping the whole house.

John Hughes struck upon the idea for Home Alone while getting ready for a vacation of his own and idly thinking to himself that he’d better not forget to take his kids. That lightbulb moment prompted him to take a break from packing, and he dashed out eight pages of notes that he would later flesh out into the full screenplay.

The film went into production after a hugely successful decade for Hughes as both a screenwriter and director. At his best, Hughes had such an uncanny knack of putting us in the shoes of young protagonists (The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), and he proved just as adept with adult characters (Planes, Trains, and Automobiles).

The great thing about Home Alone is how successfully Hughes toggles between the two. When we’re with Kevin, we see the situation from his perspective and feel his wide range of emotions, from joy and excitement to loneliness, fear, and sadness as he realises he might well be spending Christmas on his own.

I have to say the film plays better as a whole now I’m an adult with my own children. When I was a kid, I was always eager to get back to Kevin’s antics in the build up to the slapstick finale. Now I’m just as engaged with the other side of the story, and I really feel Kate’s guilt and resolve as she journeys home. O’Hara’s performance is so heartfelt and believable, and, as he’d displayed with Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, Hughes sure knew how to mine transport complications around the holidays for drama and comedy.

Completing the Hughes connection, John Candy pops up as the “Polka King of the Midwest" – reportedly, he agreed to the small role for a token fee and improvised all his scenes over the course of 24 hours. The previous year, Candy had also starred in Hughes’s Uncle Buck, which wasn’t quite as successful but provided an eye-catching showcase for Macaulay Culkin.

It’s easy to talk about Home Alone as a John Hughes film rather than a Chris Columbus joint, and for the longest time I assumed Hughes had directed as well as written the screenplay. That’s a testament to Columbus’s filmmaking style, however. Columbus had jumped ship from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (also produced and written by Hughes) due to personal issues with Chevy Chase, and his invisible direction benefits Home Alone greatly. Not only does it allow the strength of the Hughes script to shine through, it gives his young star plenty of room to take centre stage.

Hughes suggested Culkin for the lead role after working with him on Uncle Buck. Columbus took note but also wanted to plough his own furrow, checking out hundreds of other young actors before returning to Hughes’s tip. Ultimately, Culkin looked like a no-brainer for the part in 1990 and he still looks like one now – his performance was key to the film’s success and I’m always a bit surprised by just how good he is.

As I’ve said elsewhere in this series of Christmas articles, I’m not a big fan of Hollywood moppets. Make a wrong choice and a child star can seriously hamper a film’s palatability – just take that obnoxious little creep in Problem Child, or how nauseatingly cute Jonathan Lipnicki is in Jerry Maguire.

But Culkin nails the right tone, giving us a lively and irrepressible young hero that kids can relate to and adults can enjoy watching without risk of disgorging their mince pies. Kevin is authentically annoying and wise-ass at times, because let’s face it, real kids can be pretty irritating too. But Culkin plays him so disarmingly that it’s impossible not to get carried along by his exuberance and root for him as he outsmarts the Wet Bandits in a variety of hilariously painful ways.

Aside from Catherine O’Hara, Joe Pesci probably comes out tops among the supporting cast. Both Robert De Niro and Jon Lovitz turned down the role of Harry, the supposed brains of the outfit, before Pesci stepped in. The part was a little out of his comfort zone, but his casting was a masterstroke as Home Alone hit theatres just two months after Goodfellas. Perhaps it's more of an extra-textual thing, but he carries over some of his menace from the earlier film, which helps generate a real sense of peril for Kevin among the pratfalls. He makes a classic little and large comedy duo with Daniel Stern, who incidentally was reunited with John Heard six years after appearing together in C.H.U.D.

Elsewhere, it’s always good to see Roberts Blossom in a movie. He brought such a distinctive personality to even small roles, like the eager UFO-spotter with the “Stop and be friendly” sign in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The part of Marley wasn’t in Hughes’s original screenplay, but director Chris Columbus added the character to provide an extra emotional dimension. This plays out really well in the last act when Kevin discovers that the much-maligned old man is just a regular loving grandfather home alone at Christmas too.

Home Alone is 35 years old this year, and it has aged incredibly well compared to other holiday movies (and many Hollywood films in general) from around the same time. Chris Columbus deserves credit for this; he revealed in interviews that he and his production team made a deliberate effort to give the movie a traditional feel so that it could stand the test of time.

Indeed, there isn’t a huge amount to date the film, and the setting of the McAllister house and surrounding snowy neighbourhood would look just as fitting in a ‘40s black-and-white classic as it would in a modern Hallmark movie. That extends to the music, too, with John Williams composing a full orchestral score that works in festive choral pieces and nods to Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite” to provide a really Christmasy feel. Williams’ work was acknowledged by the Academy as he received the movie’s only Oscar nominations for Best Original Score and Best Original Song (“Somewhere in My Memory”).

So is Home Alone the perfect Christmas film? That depends on your idea of perfection, of course, but for me it’s a little like Jaws: A popular movie that feels timeless, and it’s hard to pinpoint a false note or a scene that runs too long or could be chopped altogether.

To give you an example, for many years my favourite Christmas movie was It’s a Wonderful Life. Perhaps it’s because I find it easier to relate to George Bailey’s woes as I get older, but I now find his catalogue of despair before the cathartic ending quite arduous to sit through. Nowadays, I wish that whole sequence could be a little shorter and not so unremittingly grim.

Home Alone delivers a similarly joyous and emotional conclusion to warm the cockles at Christmas time, but its mix of comedy and sentimentality slips down a lot easier because the blend is a lot lighter. It still has an element of darkness, with the slapstick housebreaking finale adding just enough anarchic energy to prevent the film from becoming too twee. However, it’s effortlessly enjoyable Christmas viewing with plenty of heart, and no doubt we’ll be watching it again this year!