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Home Alone Movie Review

Home Alone is a 1990 family comedy film directed by Chris Columbus and starring Macaulay Culkin. It’s a very silly, but competently made movie.

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“This is it! Don’t get scared now!“

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An eight-year-old troublemaker, mistakenly left home alone, must defend his home against a pair of burglars on Christmas Eve. First off, I have never loved this movie. It used to run on TV constantly and I simply did not like it as a child all that much. Watching it as an adult, it’s still wildly overrated, but at least now I can appreciate some of the things that it did right.

For one, the technical aspects are quite terrific. Chris Columbus is after all a family film staple and this is one of his biggest hits. He directed the film so well and the movie’s pace is solid. The first half is definitely overlong and not a lot happened there, but I guess having a longer build-up instead of having consistent action throughout was the right choice at the end of the day.

Another highlight is the score by John Williams. It’s very similar to his eventual work in Harry Potter, but it’s undeniably elegant, enchanting and quite memorable. The movie is also very well shot and its production design is naturally quite strong – the house is so well utilized within the context of the story and its action set pieces.

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This was one of the biggest movies of the early nineties, a film that instantly made Macaulay Culkin a star. It’s crazy to think that eventually he would be the less accomplished Culkin as his brother has just gotten an Oscar, but he was actually very good here. Some of his facial expressions were too over-the-top, but this larger than life performance fitted the role deftly and he was very cute and memorable throughout. I did not care for the kid as much as I should have in this type of movie, but at least Culkin elevated the role significantly.

Joe Pesci was clearly typecast as this buffoonish burglar, but he was still one of the standouts in a very amusing and fun role. Daniel Stern was much less memorable as his partner in crime, but the two did make for a very entertaining dynamic. The other family members did not get much to do with the only one making a difference obviously being Catherine O’Hara, who was quite lovely in this film.

Home Alone is at its best when it’s focusing on the holiday spirit and the childhood innocence. It truly gets what it means to be a child and how at first you would love to be left at home all alone. The ending is very moving for sure and the film has that old-fashioned Christmas season magic that made it feel timeless for many.

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But my main issue here was its shallowness. This is a very thin premise stretched unreasonably to a feature-length project and the result is an overlong slog in the first half in particular. I did not need to see those outside sequences that were unnecessary and uninteresting. The burglary set pieces were undeniably very entertaining, but way too silly for their own sake, though the imagination was quite praise-worthy there. It’s the type of film that could have used stronger character work, emotional engagement and at least a bit more complexity or depth in its very basic plot.