Hughes hits the mark with seasonal hit

Rating: 7/10 (18 December 2010)

Home Alone will long be remembered as a seasonal, workable hit comedy that will stand the test of time. The huge hit of 1990 - amazing to think it is nearly 21 years old - spawned 3 sequels that came nowhere near mastering the original, but John Hughes is in top form here and delivers a worldwide global hit. It was the movie that made Macaulay Culkin an overnight star, and thankfully for him his cutesy acting is pitched perfectly well. It would be easy to side with Joe Pesci and Stern as the bad guys when faced with an obnoxious smart ass kid, but Culkin shows us his vulnerability through the loneliness of being left at home, and it is this that works well. The humour is decent, the slapstick almost painfully real, this is a good movie with heart that deserved the success bestowed upon it at the time.