Quality at Xmas

Rating: 8/10 (31 January 2014)

Home alone review
Home alone is a warm, family comedy film made in 1990, it was written and produced by John Hughes and was directed by Chris Columbus. The main part of Kevin McCallister is played by Macaulay Culkin, his parents are played by John Heard and Catherine O'Hara and the villains (the wet bandits) are played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern. The signature tune is made by John Williams, musician of 'Star Wars', 'Harry Potter' and 'Lord of the Rings'. 20th Century Fox bought the plan for home alone from Warner Bros and upped the budget for the movie by $4 million, it turned out as a bargain for 20th Century Fox because it raked in $476,684,675 at the box office; and as of 2009, home alone was the highest grossing comedy of all time! The McCallisters go to Paris for Christmas, however their eight-year-old son Kevin is left behind after sleeping in and not being awoken but being forgotten...bad parenting! In the mother's defence, she moves Heaven and Earth attempting to get back to her son. At first, Kev loves being alone by himself in his house, eating junk food, jumping on beds, watching scary movies, going through his brothers personal belongings, without anyone telling to do otherwise. But eventually, the young boy has to fight for himself and his home as two wannabe robbers plan to raid his house. He does this while helping repair the broken family of a man who once scared the life out of him, can an eight-year-old really manage to do this? Mend, cook, clean and kick butt? After writing my Hobbit review I re-read my previous reviews, and of course I came across my Home Alone 2 review. It stated that the home alone's were really good Christmas films, and conveniently my parents had bought me the box set the previous day...good parenting! So I decided to do some Christmassy things (decorated the cake that my Grandad baked and put up my tree) whilst watching it. This movie is just as good as it's sequel, which means this film has to be quality because number two had an automatic advantage due to the fact it was in New York. This film is the first of it's kind, an individual, not repetitive, a breath of fresh air which I pointed out it's sequel review; John Hughes must have been just as tired as me with boring ol' movies that are remade every year, he must have had to rack his brains for a while in order to think up a plot like that, it's pure random gold! Anyway, I love this film, the plot is magic, the actors are magic, the music is magic and I think it well deserves to be the highest grossing comedy of all time! I think that's why it's follow-up had to be something special, in order to not be one of the biggest movie let downs of all time, and that's why three and four were. So, Well done John Hughes and Chris Columbus (for one and two, not three and four because they were a massive let down.) RATING: 8.3/10
Best parts: Kevin's initial reaction to being left alone The booby trap fight The ending (oh, how cute!?)