t’s the film that smashed box office records and created probably the biggest child star since the heyday of Shirley Temple. It’s the Christmas comedy that stayed in cinemas until way after Easter. Thirty years after it was made, it remains cherished and even venerated. Fans make a point of watching it every December. Like It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street, it’s accepted as a cast-iron Christmas classic. Nonetheless, Home Alone is still a movie that fiercely divides opinion.
Released in US cinemas on 16 November 1990, this is the story of Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin), the doe-eyed eight-year-old kid left behind in his Chicago home when his mum, dad, and all his siblings go on holiday to Paris. As the posters proclaimed, this is a “family comedy without the family". In the absence of his loved ones, little Kevin cooks, cleans… and he “kicks some butt".
The Christmas settings, the paean to family values, and Kevin’s delight and terror at being left home alone give the story its magic, and so does the slapstick violence that runs through the latter part of the movie. A pair of bungling burglars (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern) are plotting to ransack the house but Kevin is ready for them. He sets up ingenious booby traps all over the house to thwart the hapless Harry and Marv.
