where Hughes went wrong

Rating: Null/10 (7 November 2000)

Too bad for John Hughes, my favorite writer of the 80s. His first offering of the 90s was this blockbuster, not a bad film, but one that started him on an unfortunate trend. The storyline is ingenuis if you're trying to lure kids to see it, and releasing it during the holiday season made it an easy option for parents who wanted something PG rated for the little ones. It concerns Culkin being left behind by his family during a mad dash to the airport. When he awakens to an empty house, he stays unrealisticly calm. Most kids would probably be scared on their own, but he's unphased and makes the best of it, eating junk, jumping on his folks bed and staying up late watching R rated films. His family finally notices him missing halfway to Paris and mom O'Hara takes the rest of the films running time to get back to him. In the middle of living it up, Culkin discovers that a pair of hairbrained burglars plan on robbing his house. He's ready for them, arming the entire home with an array of painful traps and devices. Up until this point the film was slightly amusing, as Culkin, though not a great kid actor, was cute to watch go thru his little adventures. But Hughes, writing genius that he is, waited till the end to hatch his goldmine idea that he knew kids would eat up. Youngsters, most of which who don't understand prolonged pain and find it funny, lapped up the cartoonish injuries heaped upon Pesci and Stern. Watching as an adult, though, it just makes you uncomfortable, watching men scream in pain scene after scene. Hughes tries to cancel out the violence with a sappy happy ending, but it does nothing to erase the damage done by the unpleasantness. And as said earlier, because of the 800 million dollar success of the film, Hughes would mire himself in a clone mode for the entire decade of the nineties! Constantly remaking this formula with even worse results each time. It all went to show that even your best success cannot be the best thing for you, and all we can hope is that real John Hughes who we loved in the 80s will come home again.