Home Alone is never alone in my heart

Home Alone (1990) and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) stars Macauley Culkin and a bunch of other people, most noteabley Catherine O'Hara, John Head, Joe Pesci, and Daniel Stearn who all had careers for most of the 90's except for maybe Culkin but he hooked up with MJ and divorced his parents, so he might as well have had a career since he was still around.

These are hard movies to review because I was ten years old when the first movie was released.  These movies are a part of my holiday traditions.  I watch them every year and several times throughout the year, not because they are particularly good but because they are associated with that sugary innocent time known as childhood.

Very quickly, the run down of the plots are that Kevin (Culkin) is a child whose parents accidentally leave him behind at home while they go to Paris.  Burglars want to rob his house and he outsmarts them using a variety of slapstick gags.  Same thing in part 2 except Kevin boards a plane for New York City while his family boards a plane for Miami.  More slapstick humor ensues and in both movies the end is a heartfelt reunion with mom (O'Hara).

Written by John Hughes (yes, that Hughes) and directed by Chris Columbus, (yes, that Columbus) the movies portray Kevin as headstrong and the rest of the adults as impediments to what he wants, which is fine, but this formula doesn't usually work for repeat viewings but the movies are helped with fantastic supporting actors, from Pesci, Stern, O'Hara, John Candy, character actor Larry Hankin, and Tim Robbins, to the entire supporting cast.  The movies have great actors but because of the scripts and the nature of a holiday family movie, the performances don't necessarily soar as much as they float or walk very tall in their performances.  Culkin as a child is watchable but he is not as fluid in his performance as some of the child actors today, such as Dakota Fanning or, well....anyone.  Culkin isn't a good a actor.  Even as he grew, first puberty, then adulthood, his performances have been forced.  Whatever good actors have, Culkin doesn't have it.  In these two movies he doesn't need to posses good skills because he isn't acting in Shakespearean tragedy, he's acting in a family movie.

The writing is typical Hughes with adults who are unsympathetic to the needs of the child protagonist.  The adults are obtuse and comically one dimensional but that makes sense because as a child, adults are never anything more than what they are yelling or doing.  It never occurs to most kids that adults are anything more than authority figures.  Hughes captures that well and the adults in these movies are no different.  This doesn't mean that Culkin's character is deep because Kevin isn't.  He's a boy who wants his way and who through circumstance, gets what he desires.  The directing is unexceptional.  Lots of bright lights and Christmas things, Columbus knows what he's doing and that's to make a piece of candy for consumption by the most people.  Fine, no problems there.  If he wasn't good at his job these movies might have sucked but instead they are good examples of family friendly fare.

If you are new to Home Alone, stop at the first two.  There were two more sequals and the lack the charm the first to hold.  They also have none of the original cast/director/writer.  I'm thinking that if you like fuzzy movies, you'll like these two flicks.  The combination of Culkin and Hughes and the fantastic supporting cast really is to much to resist.