1990 • PG • 1h 43mins • Watch trailer • Stream on Disney+ • Rent it
😱 Kevin! A Home Alone 1 & 2 Double Feature
You’re reading Pizza & A Movie—eating our way through film classics and their backstories. Tonight we begin a December two-parter I’m calling Kevin! Check your baggage and forget your eight-year-olds, it’s Christmas masterpiece Home Alone.
Here’s the plot. Youngest of five Kevin McCallister (Macauley Culkin) gets no respect as his extended family preps to leave for Paris on a middle class fancy Christmas vacation. Kevin’s older brother, Buzz (Devin Ratray), razzes him relentlessly. His mom (Catherine O’Hara) allots little time for his grievances. His dad (John Heard) is too busy. His little cousin, Fuller (Kieran Culkin), will surely flood the bed Kevin is doomed to share with him. Kevin wishes they’d all just disappear.
Little does he know fate’s listening. His running-late family flies out without him—oops. Now he’s—hold on, you’re not gonna believe this—home alone. Meanwhile, master criminals in their own minds Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern) plan to Grinch the whole neighborhood out of its valuables while everyone’s traveling. Who’d stay in the ‘burbs for Christmas? Kevin, that’s who. And it’s up to the BB gun-toting, gangster movie-watching, responsible-shopping, church-going, aftershave-applying youngster to stop them. Will Kevin find friendship in unexpected places? Will there be traps? Will someone step on a nail, reminding you why you haven’t rewatched this in a while? Yes, yes, yes.
A Kevin’s Journey
I like this movie. A lot. I’ve seen it a dozen times. But I’m not gonna lie to you—Home Alone doesn’t have a story. There’s a plot in the loosey-est goosey-est three-act sense. Most of its gas comes from the high-concept premise: “What if you were home alone as a third-grader? What would you do?”
Each scene is a funny idea played out to its logical conclusion—booking it through the airport, rifling through everyone’s stuff when they’re out, idiots robbing houses. We’re there with Kevin, saying, “Yeah, I guess this makes sense, I’d probably do that too.” Because on every kid’s shoulders sit an angel and a devil. And they’re both Kevin McCallister. But all told, Home Alone is more like leafing through a volume of Calvin and Hobbes than a movie.
So, why? Why did you remember this being a great story? Because it’s got a really, really good character arc.
We’re gonna go to town on characters for a hot minute. The kind your 8th grade Lit teacher called dynamic characters. They don’t end how they started. Kevin starts the story like a high-elevation Arizona cave—a butte hole. By the end, he’s got newfound value for other people. His mom, on the other hand, stays the same. A good person doing her best with 5x too much going on around her. That’s a static character. But how’s a developing fella like Kevin, you know, develop?
He takes a lil’ Hero’s Journey, that’s how. You heard of this? It’s the three-act story structure Joseph Campbell said underlies every great yarn. Call it the “monomyth” and you can add another zero to the end of your quote. The deal is this. In three acts, the main character will go from content to conquering hero:
Act I
Something changes the status quo, calls our pal to adventure. They shrug it off, then reconsider. A wise old so-and-so gives them the what’s-what and they’re off.
Act II
Villains emerge, lines are drawn. Our hero bellies up to their biggest battle ever, wins and levels up.
Act III
But wait! Our lead faces a more deadly fight on the way home. They defeat their foe (naturally) and get a lil’ personal growth. They return home, but changed for the better.
Kevin took the exact same journey. Exceptions? Sure, but they’re clever. Instead of leaving home, home leaves Kevin in the form of an absent family. And the sage advisor? That’d be gangster movies. He reenacts Angels with Filthy Souls a couple times before going full mafia don on the invaders at his doorstep. The Hero’s Journey format explains the tacked-on showdown in the neighbor’s flooded house. If the last fight’s not personal the change doesn’t stick.
That’s why you remembered the story being great. Though the movie is just a series of choice gags, they’re arranged to follow a Hero’s Journey character arc. Just like Star Wars, The Matrix, Toy Story, The Terminator, Titanic, Harry Potter, etc. It works because it works.
You Got Q’s, I Got A’s
Okay, I understand you’ve heard a few things about Home Alone. Got some questions. We’ll take ‘em one at a time, please. Who’s first?
The casting’s perfect! Did they ever have second thoughts?
Well actually, this cast is the second thoughts. Robert De Niro got offered the Harry role. Said no thanks. John Mulaney was up for Kevin but his parents (sensibly) didn’t let him audition for it. Uncle Frank was written for Kelsey Grammar, who would have killed it. He was busy. That would have been a great cast. But so is this one. I think writer John Hughes and director Chris Columbus were sharp enough to massage their movie around the cast they got. A tailored fit is made, not bought.
Oh yeah, I heard this was a John Hughes movie!
Not really a question, but yeah, it is! Sort of. Hughes (The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Planes, Trains and Automobiles) wrote it. Said it happened like this: "I was going away on vacation, and making a list of everything I didn't want to forget. I thought, 'Well, I'd better not forget my kids.' Then I thought, 'What if I left my 10-year-old son at home? What would he do?'" But Hughes didn’t direct this one, Chris Columbus did. Columbus started out writing scripts—Gremlins and The Goonies. He’d graduated to directing but, after two directorial bombs, he was rescued by Hughes to make this, which would change the trajectory of his career.
How’d they get John Williams to do the score?
Just like with the cast, John Williams wasn’t their first choice either. Columbus wanted composer Bruce Broughton to knock out the notes. The guy’d been writing hot scores for years and had a dozen Emmys under his belt. But no dice. Fortunately, movie-making is a small world—everybody seems to know each other. Columbus cajoled Steven Spielberg into introducing him to Williams, with whom Spielberg had worked since Jaws. Williams said sure, and the rest is history.
What movie do they think they’re in?
Kevin, the traps-laying defender, thinks he’s in Rambo.
Mrs. McCallister, the harried traveller, is stuck in Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
The crooks, who mostly watch from a parked van, are in their own stakeout movie, maybe The Conversation.
Did Harry and Marv get hurt during those stunts?
Pesci and Stern? No. But they weren’t taking these falls. Stunt folks Troy Brown and Leon Delaney tossed their bodies down icy stairs take after take. And it was nerve-wracking. It took medium and wide shots to achieve the Looney Toons-like pratfalls, which made hiding safety harnesses impossible. They gave up and did the stunts without them. Director Columbus said, “Every time the stunt guys did one of those stunts it wasn't funny. We'd watch it, and I would just pray that the guys were alive.” Yikes!
Speaking of tricky sequences, was running through the airport hard to shoot?
Yes, yes it was. It’s less than a minute long in the movie, but it took days to shoot. Here’s Senta Moses Mikan, who played Kevin’s cousin, talking about it. “There were thousands of extras, all expertly choreographed so none of us would be in danger running at full speed through the American Airlines terminal at O’Hare. And we ran at full speed. Sometimes we’d bump into each other, like a multi-car pileup on the expressway, and just crack up laughing. I can’t speak for anyone else, but as a kid, I loved it.” Worth it.
For some folks, this movie is Christmas. Was it a big deal back then?
Love that question. Let’s discuss.
Alone at the Box Office
Home Alone cost $18M to make. A modest budget. It hit multiplexes on November 10, 1990. And on that opening weekend alone it made $17M. Almost the whole budget already in the bank. What you’d call “a good sign”. It was number one that weekend, and the next weekend, and the next weekend, and the nine after that. Clear through early February. It was in the top ten all the way through April. It swept up a total of $286M. In the States. Plus another $190M worldwide, for a total of $476M. It was the third most movie-making movie ever, behind E.T. and Star Wars.
It was a cultural phenomenon. Made Macaulay a movie star. And yes, to answer your question, it was a big deal back then.
Critics disagreed about a lot of it. Though mostly positive, some liked Culkin’s cutie-pie face during the first half while others found that first hour boring. Roger Ebert called the traps “so implausible that it makes it hard for me to really care about the plight of the kid” (pretty psychotic thing to say) while others loved the slapstick humor. What they all agreed on was that Macauley Culkin was king of Home Alone. In her BBC review, Ali Barclay said “Culkin walks a fine line between annoyance and endearment”. Indeed he does. Long live the king.
And after that, the Home Alone cast and crew clapped each other on the back, said “job well done” and parted ways, never to reunite again. Right?
Of course not. We look over our shoulder to see that Home Alone laid the track for what would be the great sequel of all time. You heard me. The Godfather: Part II can suck eggs. Next time we’re gettin’ into it with Lost in New York. Because this kid? Always gets left behind.
Thanks for reading! Words are nothin’ without you. And, hey, if Home Alone tickled your fancy, send this on to a pal who’d like it too! Lay the traps and lure ‘em in.
Notes:
Joe Pesci is the George Costanza of this movie. A genius only in his own mind.
The foley of the donut chunk on the cop’s phone falling onto the papers on his desk, chef’s kiss, mwah.
The tarantula is iconic. I’d like a spin-off buddy comedy called ‘Ranchula & Kevin. I’m taking bids, Peacock!
It’s a Wonderful Life dubbed in French, which would have been titled La vie est bell.
Director Chris Columbus (shout out America) was a beginner when he made Home Alone. He’d go on to make many other projects, including the first two entries in the Harry Potter film series.
I look back on my childhood love of the title sequence and I know I was always going to end up a graphic designer.
The title font is New Century Schoolbook, an enduring favorite of mine.
Kevin is a man of simple pleasures. A cheese pizza for one, ice cream with a good gangster picture.