Home Alone

A comedy set in a house near Chicago before Christmas. A large family is going to Paris. The power goes out in the night, the clocks stop, and everyone leaves in a rush in the morning. Kevin is eight. He was punished the evening before and slept in the attic; he is missed in the count and stays behind. The house is empty when he wakes. At first he is delighted and breaks every rule in it: ice cream, films, his brother's room. His mother realises on the aeroplane and starts looking for a way back. From there the film runs on two lines. The mother's struggle to return and the boy at the house. Two burglars have been working the neighbourhood. They mark the empty houses and Kevin's comes up. Kevin finds out and sets traps. What the narrative is interested in is not the traps but fear: its emotional centre is a scene in a church, where the comedy stops entirely. The last section works by cartoon logic. Paint tins, an iron, a banister and a spider; none of the injuries is realistic, deliberately. The house is a real house in that neighbourhood; the interiors for the traps were built separately. The screenplay is by John Hughes and, despite the age of its lead, is written at the rhythm of adult comedy. The music is by John Williams. It remained the highest-grossing live-action comedy for years. Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern, Catherine O'Hara and John Heard are in the cast. Chris Columbus directed. Who it is for: a Christmas classic to watch with family. Who it is not for: anyone looking for logic; the narrative does not take the boy being forgotten seriously, and should not.