One for the holidays

Rating: 6/10 (30 December 2014)

This year it is already 24 years ago that Chris Columbus' "Home Alone" starring Macaulay Culkin was released and the film gets shown pretty much every holiday season here. It also scored 2 Academy Award nominations, probably mostly because it was by far the most commercially successful movie in the United States in 1990. Of course, that is also why so far there have been three sequels, with only the second starring the lead actor and most of the original cast in "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York". Columbus directed this sequel as well and later worked on "Mrs Doubtfire" and several "Harry Potter" films.
One of the strengths of "Home Alone" is that also all the smaller characters bring quite some charm and fun. Kevin's uncle (especially during his scenes in the plane) is my favorite smaller funny character and Old Man Marley brings the emotional highlights here. That church scene was particularly wonderful. What a shame the actor is not alive anymore. Same goes for the film's writer John Hughes and John Candy, who both died way too early. Mentioning John Hughes, I was a bit surprised that the smoking Santa was not him in a small role. He exactly looked that way. You may have seen some of Hughes' other very known works such as "The Breakfast Club", "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", "101 Dalmatians" and many more.
Another mention goes out to Joe Pesci, who has had a true career year in 1990. Here he plays the chubby, slightly smarter villain (over Daniel Stern's character) compared to his completely sinister mafiosi gangster turn in "Goodfellas", which won him the Oscar that year. Culkin was nominated for a Golden Globe in the musical/comedy actor category, but lost to Gerard Depardieu, who won for the only movie from all the nominees which is not considered a classic or close to that description today.
"Home Alone" runs for roughly 100 minutes and will make you laugh a lot and also touch you. The latter happened for me mostly with the old man with the snow shovel and how meeting Kevin impacts his life. My favorite funny scene was the gangster film playing with the poor pizza guy coming along. I saw it so often already, but it never fails to crack me up. I am not sure if I would call this movie a classic or even an epic, but it is certainly worth a watch. Recommended.