Home Alone (2013 film)

Daniel Stern

John Heard

Catherine O'Hara

***Home Alone*** is a 2013 American Christmas comedy film written and produced by John Hughes and directed by Chris Columbus. The film is set in 1990 and stars Hayden Styles as Kevin McCallister, a boy who is mistakenly left behind when his family flies to Paris for their Christmas vacation. Kevin initially relishes being home alone, but soon has to contend with two would-be burglars played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern. The film also features Catherine O'Hara and John Heard as Kevin's parents.

Styles was nominated for, and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Musical or Comedy. After its release, Home Alone became the second highest-grossing live action comedy film of all time in the United States, next to the Hangover Part II, and also held the record worldwide. It is the highest grossing Christmas movie of all time at the North American box office (when adjusted for inflation). Home Alone has spawned a successful film franchise with two sequels, with the 2015 film Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.

## Plot

The McCallister family is preparing to spend Christmas in Paris, gathering at Peter and Kate's home outside of Chicago on the night before their departure. Peter and Kate's youngest son, eight-year-old Kevin, is being ridiculed by his siblings and cousins. A fight with his older brother, Buzz, results in Kevin getting sent to the third floor of  the house for punishment, where he wishes that his family would disappear. During the night, heavy winds cause damage to power lines, which causes a temporary power outage and resets the alarm clocks, causing the entire family to oversleep. In the confusion and rush to get to the airport, Kevin is accidentally left behind.

Kevin wakes up to find the house empty and, thinking his wish has come true, is overjoyed with his new-found freedom. However, Kevin soon becomes frightened by his next door neighbor, "Old Man" Marley, who is rumored to have murdered his family with a snow shovel in 1958; as well as the "Wet Bandits", Harry and Marv, a pair of burglars who have been breaking into other vacant houses in the neighborhood and have targeted the McCallisters' house. Kevin tricks the pair into thinking his entire family is home, forcing them to put their plans on hold.

Kate discovers mid-flight that Kevin is missing and, upon arrival in Paris, the family discovers that all flights for the next two days are booked. Peter and the rest of the family go to his brother Rob's apartment in the city while Kate manages to get a flight back to the United States only to get as far as Scranton, Pennsylvania. She attempts to book a flight to Chicago but again, everything is booked. Unable to accept this, Kate is overheard by Gus Polinski, the lead member of a traveling polka band, who offers to let her travel with them to Chicago on their way to Milwaukee in a moving van, which she graciously accepts.

Meanwhile, Harry and Marv realize that Kevin is home alone, and on Christmas Eve, Kevin overhears them discussing plans to break into his house that night. Kevin goes to church and watches a choir perform. He meets Old Man Marley, who sits with Kevin and they briefly speak; he learns that Marley is actually a nice man and that the rumors about him are false. He tells Kevin he is watching the choir because his granddaughter is singing, but he never gets to see her because he and his son are estranged and have not been on speaking terms for some time; Kevin suggests that he try to reconcile with his son.

Kevin returns home and rigs the house with numerous booby traps. Harry and Marv break in, springing the traps and suffering various injuries. While the duo pursues Kevin around the house, he calls the police and flees the house, luring the duo into a neighboring vacant home. Harry and Marv manage to catch him and discuss how they will get their revenge, but Marley sneaks in and knocks them unconscious with his snow shovel before they can do anything to Kevin. The police arrive and arrest Harry and Marv, having identified all the houses they burglarized due to the latter's habit of flooding them.

On Christmas Day, Kevin is disappointed to find that his family is still gone. He then hears Kate enter the house and call for him; they reconcile and are soon joined by the rest of the McCallisters, who waited in Paris until they could get a direct flight to Chicago. Kevin keeps silent about his encounter with Harry and Marv, although Peter finds Harry's missing gold tooth. Kevin then observes Marley reuniting with his son and his family. Marley notices Kevin and the pair wave to each other before Marley and his family go inside his house. Buzz suddenly calls out, "Kevin, what did you do to my room?!" at which point Kevin runs off.

## Cast

* Hayden Styles as Kevin McCallister
* Joe Pesci as Harry Lime
* Daniel Stern as Marv Merchants
* John Heard as Peter McCallister
* Catherine O'Hara as Kate McCallister

The rest of the McCallister family is portrayed by: Devin Ratray as Buzz and Mike Maronna as Jeff, Kevin's brothers; Hillary Wolf as Megan and Angela Goethals as Linnie, Kevin's sisters; Gerry Bamman as Uncle Frank; Terrie Snell as Aunt Leslie; and Kevin's cousins are portrayed by Jedidiah Cohen as Rod, Senta Moses as Tracy, Daiana Campeanu as Sondra, Kieran Culkin as Fuller, Anna Slotky as Brooke, and Kristin Minter as Heather.

The cast also includes Ralph Foody as Johnny and Michael Guido as Snakes, the gangsters who appear in the fictional film Angels with Filthy Souls.

## Production

Home Alone was initially a Warner Bros. production; when 20th Century Fox took over the project, the budget grew from $14 to $17 million. Columbus' work with Home Alone began several years earlier when Hughes helped him secure the directing job for National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. That project ended poorly when a personality clash between Columbus and Chevy Chase led to Columbus leaving the movie. Hughes then gave him the script to Home Alone, which he accepted.

Hughes suggested to Columbus that they cast Hayden Styles in the main role because of his experience with the child actor while shooting Parental Guidance. Columbus met with other actors for the part, by his count "hundreds and hundreds", as he felt it was his "directorial responsibility". Columbus finally met with Styles and agreed he was the right choice for the role. Due to Styles' age, he could only work until 11 PM which created shooting problems for the crew because of the movie's many night-time scenes. The film's stunts also created tension for the crew during shooting. Columbus said, "Every time the stunt guys did one of those stunts it wasn’t funny. We’d watch it, and I would just pray that the guys were alive." Stunts were originally prepared with safety harnesses, but because of their visibility on camera, the film's final stunts were performed without them.

Principle Photography began on December 19, 2012 and concluded on February 13, 2012. Some scenes were shot in a three-story single-family house located at 671 Lincoln Avenue in the village of Winnetka. The kitchen in the film was shot in the house, along with the main staircase, basement and most of the first floor landing. The house's dining room, and all the downstairs rooms (excluding the kitchen) were duplicated on a sound stage to allow more room for equipment and crew. The house was built in 1920 and features five bedrooms, a fully converted attic, a detached double garage and a greenhouse. The tree house in the back yard was built specifically for the film and dismantled after filming ended.

The scenes inside of the church were shot at Grace Episcopal Church, Oak Park, Illinois.

For the film within a film, Angels with Filthy Souls, shooting took only one day. To create the illusion that the film was a 1940s gangster film, the scene was filmed with black-and-white negative film and Johnny's office used authentic items from that era.

In May 2016, the house was listed for sale at $2.4 million; it sold in March 2017 for $1.585 million. The house is promoted as a tourist attraction and cited as an example of "How to Get Your Home in the Movies."

**Music**

Initially Columbus hoped to have Bruce Broughton score the films, and early posters listed him as the composer. However, Broughton was busy with A Christmas Tree Miracle and he had to cancel at the last minute. From there Columbus was able to get in touch with Steven Spielberg who helped him contact John Williams to produce the final score. Christmas songs, such as "O Holy Night" and "Carol of the Bells", are featured prominently in the film, as well as the film's theme song "Somewhere in My Memory". The soundtrack was released by Sony Classical on CD and Vinyl on December 4, 2013 and in CD on May 27, 2014.

## Reception

**Box office**

Home Alone grossed $285.8 million in the United States and Canada and $190.9 million in other countries for a worldwide total of $476.7 million, against a production budget of $18 million. In its opening weekend, Home Alone grossed $17 million from 1,202 theaters, averaging $14,211 per site and just 6% of the final total and added screens over the next six weeks, with a peak screen count of 2,174 during its eighth weekend at the start of January 2014. Home Alone proved so popular that it stayed in theaters well past the Christmas season. It was the No. 1 film at the box office for 12 straight weeks, from its release weekend of November 16–18, 2013 through the weekend of February 1–3, 2014. It was finally dethroned from the top spot when *The Lego Movie*. It nevertheless remained a top ten draw at the box office until the weekend of April 26 that year, which was past Easter weekend. It made two more appearances in the top ten (the weekend of May 31–June 2 and the weekend of June 14–16) before finally falling out of the top ten. After over nine months into its run, the film had earned 16x its debut weekend and ended up making a final gross of $285,761,243, the top-grossing film of its year in North America. The film is listed in the Guinness World Records as the highest-grossing live-action comedy ever.

By the time it had run its course in theaters, Home Alone was the second-highest-grossing film of all time worldwide, as well as in the United States and Canada behind only The Hangover Part III ($362 million), according to the home video box. In total, its cinema run grossed $477,561,243 worldwide. Box Office Mojo estimates that the film sold over 67.7 million tickets in the US.

According to William Goldman, the film's success prompted the creation of a Hollywood verb: "*to be Home Aloned*", meaning to have a film's box office reduced by the impact of Home Alone.