I don’t know if 1990’s Home Alone is a good film or not. I honestly can’t be objective about it at all. I’m not sure when I first saw it, but I do know I rented (or got my parents to rent it) from our local video shop at some point in the early 90s and I was instantly smitten.
I watched that rental tape repeatedly until it sadly had to be returned (which would likely have been 48 hours after it came into my possession). Shortly after that I purchased my own copy with saved up pocket money and continued to watch it ad nauseum.
I still enjoy it today. I don’t know how much of this is nostalgia and how much of that enjoyment can be attributed to the fact that it is actually a good movie. I have to imagine, though, that even if it were the greatest film ever made, my enjoyment these days is pure sentimentality.
Irrespective of its merits, it’s surely hard to argue that Macauley Culkin is not one of the finest child actors ever to grace the silver screen. And although Joe Pesci is renowned for more prestigious acting credits, his collaboration with Daniel Stern as the inept Harry and Marv, must be among the great comic double acts in cinema.
Score for Christmasishness
Home Alone very nearly made the inaugural version of this ridiculous annual countdown. But I left it out on the grounds that it has, over the years, become pretty established in my head as an ‘actual Christmas film’ as opposed to one, which is a bit Christmas(ish). But I’ve reviewed that position this year on the basis that a terrestrial UK TV channel elected to show it in April. April is definitely not Christmas. And it occurred to me that as a child I watched Home Alone all year round and never really considered it a movie solely to be consumed at Christmas. And,while if you took Christmas away from the narrative you would definitely lose something, there is the potential for the story to work at a different time of year. But it is set at Christmas, and it is very very Christmassy throughout. So irrespective of whether there is an argument to be made about it not being a bona fide Christmas movie, it is certainly Christmas(ish) in the extreme.
James Proclaims! 