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Home Alone: Difference between revisions
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{{Multiple Works Need Separate Pages}}
[[File:HomeAlone.jpg|frame]]
{{quote|''"Kevin!"''}}
Kevin McCallister ([[Macaulay Culkin]]) is an eight-year-old boy from an affluent suburb of [[The Windy City|Chicago]].
During the holidays, his extended family comes into his house with his already large immediate family to prepare for their vacation to France (where some ''more'' relatives of theirs are temporarily living). Of course, Kevin causes trouble during dinner, pushing his oldest brother, Buzz, in anger for eating his cheese pizza. As a punishment, Kevin is forced up into the attic where he was intended to sleep with his bed-wetting cousin, Fuller.
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The second sequel, 1997's ''Home Alone 3'', had a completely different cast and characters (i.e. Kevin was replaced by Alex Pruitt, played by [[The Danza|Alex D. Linz]]), but was otherwise still similar to the first movie. In fact, many of the characters are [[Expy|very much like]] the characters of the previous movies, with one exception: the [[The Family for the Whole Family|stupid burglars]], wanted by the local police, were replaced with intelligent spies wanted by the FBI, making the traps less believable. John Hughes still wrote and produced it, but Chris Columbus didn't return to direct - that role was given to Raja Gosnell, editor of the first two films (and future director of ''Big Momma's House'', the live-action ''[[Scooby Doo]]'' movies, and ''Beverly Hills Chihuahua''). It was not as successful as the original two (it grossed only $79 million, compared to the $476 million of the first film and the $358 million of the second).
The third sequel, ''Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House'' is a 2002 Made For TV sequel ([[Negative Continuity|but any continuity is absent]]). It brought back the original characters, but they were again [[The Other Darrin|all recast]] with actors who often looked nothing like the original ones, with the most [[Egregious]] examples being Buzz and Megan (originally late teenagers, now somehow preteens) and Marv (now played by French Stewart, who looks nothing like Daniel Stern, and ironically more like [[Joe Pesci]]). Much of the family is somehow missing, and Harry has been replaced with Marv's wife, Vera (Missi Pyle). Not even John Hughes had anything to do with this entry; Rod Daniel of ''[[Teen Wolf (film)|Teen Wolf]]'' and ''K-9'' fame took over the director's chair for this entry, which would prove to be [[Creator Killer|the last thing he directed]]. This one was apparently afflicted by severe [[Executive Meddling]], which heavily altered the original script in the hope of launching a TV series off the back of it. Unsurprisingly, nothing of the sort ever materialized.
A fourth sequel, ''Home Alone
And in 2018, Macaulay Culkin recreated his role as an adult Kevin home alone on Christmas in an [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKYABI-dGEA advertisement for Google Assistant].
The movies (especially the first two) have become something of a cultural meme in [[Poland]]. That's because since the restoration of independence in 1990, each year one of the main TV stations aired ''Home Alone'' during Christmas. Today many Poles can't imagine Christmas without 'Kevin'. In the event that no station is planning to show the movie, stations are flooded with mail and petitions until one agrees to broadcast the movie. Eventually, a proverb was coined: "'Kevin' on TV? It must be Christmas coming." It's the Polish equivalent to ''[[It's a Wonderful Life]]'' in America.▼
The original ''Home Alone'' was added to the [[National Film Registry]] in 2023.
▲The movies (especially the first two) have become something of a cultural meme in [[Poland]]. That's because since the restoration of independence in 1990, each year one of the main TV stations aired 'Home Alone' during Christmas. Today many Poles can't imagine Christmas without 'Kevin'. In the event that no station is planning to show the movie, stations are flooded with mail and petitions until one agrees to broadcast the movie. Eventually, a proverb was coined: "'Kevin' on TV? It must be Christmas coming." It's the Polish equivalent to ''[[It's a Wonderful Life]]'' in America.
{{tropelist}}
* [[Adult Child]]: Marv.
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* [[Booby Trap]]: One of the big draws of the movie is watching Kevin (or Alex) set up some fiendishly ingenious traps for the bad guys. A lot of these traps would likely kill if these were anything other than comedy movies.
* [[Boom! Headshot!]]: One of Kevin's methods of dispatching the Wet Bandits involved him shooting Marv in the forehead with a B.B. gun when he poked his head through the doggie door. Surprisingly, the best it did was leave a stinging sensation on his forehead rather than killing him.
** ... "Surprisingly"? It's a ''BB gun''.
* [[Bowdlerise]]: Channels like ABC Family and CN seem to love editing out certain parts of the final act of the second film like Kevin hitting Marv three times with bricks for example which was scaled back to one brick being used instead.
** Not to mention the aforementioned [[Angrish]] Harry mutters whenever Kevin injures him.
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* [[Disproportionate Retribution]]: In both films, Harry and Marv are guilty of committing robbery. So Kevin decides that the appropriate punishment is to burn them with blowtorches, hit them with irons, paint cans and snow shovels, shove nails through their feet, pummel them with bricks and pipes, electrocute them, blow them up, and generally put them through as much physical pain as humanly possible. Probably justified in the first film, as Kevin overheard them talking about their plans of robbing the house even with Kevin being home and insinuating that he'd be too scared to hold fort, and after getting some advice from the shovelman, he decides he'll do everything in his ability to ensure they don't enter the house and rob anything, and possibly buy enough time for the police to arrive and arrest them before they succeed in robbing it (since another scene had Kevin calling the police about the robbery, albeit under a false identity).
** Not the case in the third and forth films given the villains in the third are a few notches above just robbers while in the fourth, both villains don't really get caught up in very much compared to the other three.
* [[Do They Know It's Christmas Time?]]: Averted with Harry and Marv, as they don't seem to mind committing burglaries around Christmas.
** It's also averted to a higher level with Johnny in "Angels with Even Filthier Souls". He doesn't care if it's the holiday season. He's not letting his cheating girlfriend get off scot-free.
{{quote|Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal! And a happy new year.}}
* [[Double Take]]: In the second movie:
{{quote|'''Kate:''' Kevin's not here.
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* [[No Endor Holocaust]]: Kevin must have had a [[Cleanup Crew]] for ''most'' of the house (save Buzz's room, evidently), at the end of Home Alone 1. In less than 12 hours (9pm-daybreak the next morning), all of his traps are neatly put away, the crushed Christmas ornaments Harry stepped on as he climbed through the window are swept away and didn't damage the floor's finish, the front doorknob and mechanism were unharmed from being super-heated, thankfully his family doesn't slip on the ice on the front steps.
* [[Non-Fatal Explosions]]: In the second movie, Kevin lights Harry's head on fire, Harry puts it out in the toilet, not knowing it is filled with kerosene (which looks like water at first glance), and blows the entire first floor up. Luckily, Harry only has second-degree burns on his scalp (as well as soot on his face and teeth and a damaged hat) to worry about.
* [[No One Should Survive That]]:
* [[Oh Crap]]: For Kevin ''and'' the audience near the end of the second movie. It turned out {{spoiler|Harry ''wasn't'' bluffing from an earlier scene; he really DID have a gun in his coat pocket.}}
** Marv sticking his head through the doggy door and into the barrel of a BB gun...which he then turns it into an [[Oh Crap]] smile.
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** Kevin and his family do not understand how to tip people.
*** Actually, in one scene where the bellboy reveals he still has "some tip left over" (a stick of gum), Kevin flashes a wad of cash and grins, implying that he probably does know how to tip and is just screwing with the bellboy.
* [[Same Story, Different Names]]: The original was so popular that beyond the sequels, John Hughes wrote other family comedies for various studios - ''[[Beethoven (film)|Beethoven]]'' (1992, though under a pseudonym), ''[[Dennis the Menace US]]'' (1993), ''Baby's Day Out'' (1994), the live-action ''[[101 Dalmatians|One Hundred and One Dalmatians]]'' (1996), and ''[[Flubber]]'' (1997) - that all had bad guys getting outwitted by kids, animals, etc. at some point, usually as violently as possible...and they still can't die.
* [[Sanctuary of Solitude]]: Kevin is lonely on Christmas night for the first one, so he goes to the church to hear the choir sing.
* [[The Scream]]: Parodied once per movie.
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* [[Xanatos Roulette]]: The positioning of many of the traps qualify, but most [[Egregious|egregiously]] the trick used in the third movie to switch {{spoiler|one of the spies' guns for a fake}}.
** The only trap in the first film that borders on this is the "ornaments under the window" trick, which requires that the bandit who went into the basement would then try in vain to walk up the tar covered stairs, lose their shoes, give up, and then requires that same bandit to try and enter through that exact same window, only to walk barefoot over the ornaments.
*** Not really, even if he had shoes he could still trip on the broken
*** The blowtorch only works if you assume that Kevin knew Harry's exact height ''and'' could be sure that he, not Marv, would be the one to come in that way.
*** Since Marv is taller than Harry, it would still burn Marv, just not on his head. It does require not being placed too high to burn Harry, however.
* [[Your Cheating Heart]]: "Angels With Filthier Souls" has Johnny's girlfriend kissing other men. And boy, does she pay the price for it...
* [[Your Princess Is in Another Castle]]: "Kevin! What did you do to my room?!"
** And in the sequel: "Kevin! You spent $967 on room service?!"
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Films of the 1990s]]▼
[[Category:Home Alone]]
[[Category:Film]]
[[Category:
[[Category:Christmas Movies]]
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