Home Alone

Home Alone Information

Home Alone is a 1990 American Christmas comedy film written and produced by John Hughes and directed by Chris Columbus. The film stars Macaulay Culkin as Kevin McCallister, a boy who is mistakenly left behind when his family flies to Paris for their Christmas vacation. Kevin initially relishes being home alone, but soon has to contend with two would-be burglars played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern. The film also features Catherine O'Hara and John Heard as Kevin's parents.

Culkin was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Musical or Comedy. After its release, Home Alone became the highest-grossing live action comedy film of all time in the US, and also held the record worldwide until it was overtaken by The Hangover Part II in 2011. It is the highest grossing Christmas movie of all time at the North American box office (when adjusted for inflation). Home Alone has spawned a successful film franchise with four sequels, including the 1992 film Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, the only Home Alone sequel to have the original cast reprising their roles.

Plot

In Chicago, Illinois, the McCallister family is preparing for a Christmas vacation in Paris. On the night before their departure, the entire family gathers at Peter and Kate's home, where their 8-year-old son, Kevin, is ridiculed by his siblings and cousins. After a scuffle with his older brother, Buzz, Kevin is sent to the third floor of the house, where he wishes that his family would disappear. During the night, heavy winds cause damage to power lines, which causes the alarm clocks to reset; consequently, the family oversleeps. In the confusion and rush to get to the airport in time to catch their flight, Kevin is accidentally left behind.

Meanwhile, Kevin wakes up to find the house empty and, believing his wish has come true, is overjoyed with his new-found freedom. However, Kevin's joy turns to fear as he encounters his next door neighbor, "Old Man" Marley, who is rumored to have murdered his family with a snow shovel in 1958; he also encounters the "Wet Bandits", Harry and Marv, a pair of burglars who have been breaking into other vacant houses in the neighborhood and have targeted the McCallisters' house. Kevin is initially able to keep them away by making the house appear as if the family is at home, but they eventually realize that Kevin is home alone.

Kate realizes mid-flight that Kevin is missing and, upon arrival in Paris, the family finds out all flights to Chicago for the next two days are all booked. Peter and the rest of the family go to Uncle Frank's apartment in the city while Kate manages to get a flight back to the United States but is only able to get as far as Scranton, Pennsylvania. She tries to book a flight to Chicago but again, everything is booked. Unable to accept this, Kate is overheard by Gus Polinski (played by John Candy), the lead member of a traveling polka band, who offers to let her travel with them to Winnetka on their way to Milwaukee in a moving van, which she gradually accepts.

On Christmas Eve, Kevin overhears Harry and Marv discussing plans for breaking into his house that night. Kevin goes to church and watches a choir perform. He meets Marley, who sits with Kevin and they briefly speak; he learns that Marley is actually a nice man and that the rumors about him are false. He tells Kevin he is watching the choir because his granddaughter is in it, but he never gets to see her because he and his son are estranged, and have not been on speaking terms ever since; Kevin suggests that he try to reconcile with his son.

Kevin returns home and rigs the house with numerous booby traps. Harry and Marv break in, springing the traps and suffering various injuries. While the duo chases Kevin around the house, he calls the police and escapes the house, luring the duo into a neighboring vacant home. Harry and Marv manage to catch him and discuss how they will get their revenge, but Marley sneaks in and knocks them unconscious with his snow shovel before they can do anything to Kevin. The police arrive and arrest Harry and Marv, having identified all the houses they burglarized due to Marv's habit of flooding them.

On Christmas Day, Kevin is disappointed to find that his family is still gone. He then hears Kate enter the house and call for him; they reconcile and are soon joined by the rest of the McCallisters, who waited in Paris until they could get a direct flight to Chicago. Kevin keeps silent about his encounter with Harry and Marv, although Peter finds Harry's missing gold tooth. Kevin then observes Marley reuniting with his son and his family. Marley notices Kevin and the pair acknowledge each other before Marley and his family go home. Buzz suddenly calls out, "Kevin, what did you do to my room?!" at which point Kevin runs off.

Cast

Macaulay Culkin as Kevin McCallister, an energetic 8-year-old boy who is the youngest son of the McCallister family. He can be obnoxious and annoying, but he is proven to be extremely clever and resourceful.
Joe Pesci as Harry Lime, the short leader of the Wet Bandits. He is intelligent but short tempered and ruthless.
Daniel Stern as Marv Merchants, the tall member of the Wet Bandits. The dimmer of the duo, he has a childlike enthusiasm for toys and likes to leave the water running to 'mark' the houses they have burgled.
John Heard as Peter McCallister, Kevin's father.
Catherine O'Hara as Kate McCallister, Kevin's mother.
Roberts Blossom as Old Man Marley, the McCallisters' elderly neighbor.

The rest of the McCallister family is portrayed by: Devin Ratray as Buzz and Mike Maronna as Jeff, Kevin's brothers; Hillary Wolf as Megan and Angela Goethals as Linnie, Kevin's sisters; Gerry Bamman as Uncle Frank; Terrie Snell as Aunt Leslie; and Kevin's cousins are portrayed by Jedidiah Cohen as Rod, Senta Moses as Tracy, Daiana Campeanu as Sondra, Kieran Culkin (Macaulay Culkin's real brother) as Fuller, Anna Slotky as Brooke, and 25-year old Kristin Minter (the only actor to play any of Kevin's siblings or cousins who was more than 14 years old when the film was released) as Heather.

The cast also includes: John Candy as Gus Polinski, "the Polka King of the Midwest"; Ralph Foody as Johnny, a gangster who appears in the fictional film Angels with Filthy Souls; Larry Hankin as Larry Balzak, a police sergeant who works in family crisis; Ken Hudson Campbell as a man dressed as Santa Claus; and Hope Davis as a Paris-Orly Airport receptionist.

Production

Home Alone was initially a Warner Bros. production; when 20th Century Fox took over the project, the budget grew from $14 to $17 million.

Home Alone was set"?and mostly shot"?in the greater Chicago area in February 1990. Other shots, such as those of Paris, are either stock footage or film trickery. The Paris-Orly Airport scenes were filmed in one part of O'Hare International Airport. The scene where Kevin wades through a flooded basement when trying to outsmart the burglars was shot in the swimming pool of New Trier High School. A mock-up of the McDonnell Douglas DC10 business class was also put together in the school, on the basketball courts.

Some scenes were shot in a three-story single-family house located at 671 Lincoln Avenue in the village of Winnetka. The kitchen in the film was shot in the house, along with the main staircase, basement and most of the first floor landing. The house's dining room, and all the downstairs rooms (excluding the kitchen) were built on a sound stage. The house was built in 1921 and features five bedrooms, a fully converted attic, a detached double garage and a greenhouse. The tree house in the back yard was built specifically for the film and dismantled after principal photography ended.

In May 2011, the house was listed for sale at $2.4 million; it sold in March 2012 for $1.585 million. The house is promoted as a tourist attraction and cited as an example of "How to Get Your Home in the Movies."

Music

See Home Alone: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack for more information The film score of Home Alone was composed by John Williams. Christmas songs, such as "O Holy Night" and "Carol of the Bells", are featured prominently in the film, as well as the film's theme song "Somewhere in My Memory". The soundtrack was released by Sony Classical in 1990.

Reception

Box office

In its opening weekend, Home Alone grossed $17 million in 1,202 theaters, averaging $14,211 per site and just 6% of the final total and added screens over the next six weeks, with a peak screen count of 2,174 during its eighth weekend at the start of January 1991. Home Alone proved so popular that it stayed in theaters well past the Christmas season. It was the 1 film at the box office for 12 straight weeks, from its release weekend of November 16-18, 1990 through the weekend of February 1-3, 1991. It was finally dethroned from the top spot when Sleeping with the Enemy opened with $13 million. It nevertheless remained a top ten draw at the box office until the weekend of April 26 that year, which was well past Easter weekend. It made two more appearances in the top ten (the weekend of May 31 - June 2 and the weekend of June 14-16) before finally falling out of the top ten. After over nine months into its run, the film had earned 16x its debut weekend and ended up making a final gross of $285,761,243, the top grossing film of its year in North America. The film is listed in the Guinness World Records as the highest-grossing live-action comedy ever.

By the time it had run its course in theaters, Home Alone was the third highest-grossing film of all time worldwide, as well as in the United States and Canada behind only Star Wars ($322 million at the time) and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial ($399 million at that time), according to the home video box. In total, its cinema run grossed $477,561,243 worldwide.

According to William Goldman, the film's success prompted the creation of a Hollywood verb: "to be Home Aloned", meaning to have a film's box office reduced by the impact of Home Alone.

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, Home Alone holds an approval rating of 55%, based on 42 reviews, with an average rating of 5.2/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Home Alone is frequently funny and led by a terrific starring turn from Macaulay Culkin, but an uneven script and a premise stretched unreasonably thin make it hard to wholeheartedly recommend." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating, it has a score of 63 out of 100, based on 9 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Variety magazine praised the film for its cast. Jeanne Cooper of The Washington Post praised the film for its comedic approach. Hal Hinson, also of The Washington Post, praised Chris Columbus's direction and Culkin's acting. Although Caryn James of The New York Times complained that the film's first half is "flat and unsurprising as its cute little premise suggests", she praised the second half for its slapstick humor. She also praised the conversation between Kevin and Marley, as well as the film's final scenes.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a out of 4-star rating. He compared the elaborate booby-traps in the film to Rube Goldberg, writing "they're the kinds of traps that any 8-year-old could devise, if he had a budget of tens of thousands of dollars and the assistance of a crew of movie special effects people" and criticized the plot as "so implausible that it makes it hard for [him] to really care about the plight of the kid [Kevin]". However, he praised Culkin's performance. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly magazine gave the film a "D" grade, criticizing the film for its "sadistic festival of adult-bashing". Gleiberman said that "[John] Hughes is pulling our strings as though he'd never learn to do anything else".

Home Alone is often ranked among the greatest Christmas films of all-time.

Accolades

The film was nominated for two Academy Awards, one for Best Original Score, which was written by John Williams, and the other for Best Original Song for "Somewhere in My Memory", music by Williams and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse.

American Film Institute Lists

AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs - Nominated
AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains:
- Harry Lime & Marv Merchants - Nominated Villains

Sequels

The film was followed by a commercially successful sequel in 1992, Lost in New York, which brings back the first film's cast. The film within a film, Angels with Filthy Souls, had a sequel in Home Alone 2, Angels with Even Filthier Souls. Both Angels meta-films featured character actor Ralph Foody as stereotypical 1930s mobster Johnny.

Home Alone 3, released in 1997, has completely different actors, and a different storyline with Hughes writing the screenplay.

A fourth made-for-TV film followed in 2002, Home Alone 4. This entry features some of the same characters who were in the first two films, but with a new cast and a storyline that does not fall into the same continuity. Hughes did not write the screenplay for the TV film.

On November 25, 2012, a fifth film, The Holiday Heist premiered during ABC Family's 25 Days of Christmas programming event.

In December 2015, Culkin reprised his role as an adult Kevin McCallister in the inaugural episode of the Jack Dishel web series, "DRYVRS", where a visibly disturbed Kevin recounts his experience of being left home alone by his family. In response to Culkin's video, Daniel Stern appeared in a short video reprising his role as Marv, released in conjunction with Stern's Reddit AMA, where he pleads for Harry to return to help protect him against Kevin's cunning traps.

Novelization

Home Alone (ISBN 0-590-55066-7) was novelized by Todd Strasser and published by Scholastic in 1990 to coincide with the film.

Among the differences from the film the McCallisters live in Oak Park, Illinois, the Wet Bandits are named as Harry Lyme and Marv Murchens and Buzz's tarantula is named as Axl.