Home Alone (1990)
Retro Review #29: Smart kid vs. dumb criminals at Christmastime equals holiday slapstick success.
Home Alone (1990) — Smart kid vs. dumb criminals at Christmastime equals holiday slapstick success.
+ Feature film, 1h 43m
Project #1: 2024 Christmas Tour
Project #5: 2025 Christmas Leftovers
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A-v
Family Suitability
+ ✅2️⃣ OK for teens and adults. (Grades 7+) | PGa
Alignment with Judeo-Christian Values
+ ❎2️⃣ Good/Moderately Favorable
+ 1️⃣/6 movies in Home Alone movie series ⭐
+ 1️⃣/3 films in Home Alone film series ⭐
Home Alone (1990)
Grade: A-v (8.0) / HOF: 15
EQ 👍B+ | 📖B 👥B+ 📽️A- 🎼A+
DW 😎9.4 | 🌚9 🌝10
POPCAP 💯n/a 🍿n/a 🧢n/a
L-R ☮️n/a ◀️n/a ▶️n/a 🛐n/a
1990 is the second straight year that the most successful Christmas movie of the season is set in the Chicago suburbs and is written by John Hughes. (See National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation) Hughes also wrote my favorite Thanksgiving movie, Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
Hughes passed away in 2009 at age 59, so his filmography is complete. Looking it over, I see seven films I remember liking a lot, three I remember disliking and one I don’t recall whether I liked it or not. So he’s mostly hit or miss with me. The first time I saw Home Alone, it was a miss.
I saw it in the theaters 34 years ago and remember just hating it. But now recognizing who wrote it and how popular it is among Christmas movies, I was determined to give it a second chance and watch with an open mind.
It wasn’t easy. Most of the aspects that I disliked the most about the movie fill up the first half. It was 20 minutes into the movie before anything made me laugh. Way too long for a purported comedy. I’m guessing that the first time I watched I gave up on the movie and sat through the second half without paying much attention.
Look, I get that this is a slapstick and we’re supposed to overlook the fact that no matter how precocious an 8-year-old kid left home alone might be, no one person could set up that many elaborate booby traps for home-invading burglars in two or three days, let alone the two or three hours that appear to be allotted in this film. I can suspend disbelief.
I just can’t believe a kid that smart, who also dispenses out wise advice to an old man, as opposed to vice versa, would believe that he actually made a wish that caused his family to disappear. A smart kid would figure out you can’t magically wish things into reality by five or six, let alone eight years old.
John Hughes is a very good writer, but Orson Scott Card remains the only writer I’ve ever come across who writes intelligent children believably.
Then there’s the acting by Macaulay Culkin as young Kevin. Hey, 99% of child actors overact, so I don’t blame him, I blame the director Chris Columbus. The iconic both-hands-on-face pose from the Home Alone poster is Culkin at his worst. It doesn’t look natural at all, just the actor being instructed how to mug for the camera. Worse yet it happens five or six times in the first half of the film in situations that should elicit different reactions. By the second or third time, I wanted to scream!
Not only that, but I refuse to believe any kid ever made that face on his own before this movie came out, and now we have to suffer from millions of them copying it from the film!
Fortunately they leave that contrived pose behind, and I was pleasantly surprised how many things I found to like in the second half of the film.
First, it got funnier. I caught myself laughing here and there. This is absolutely a Dark Whimsy film. Not one of my favorites ever, but with more laughs the Whimsy increased.
Next, the musical score by John Williams, good even in the first half, kept getting better. Other songs chosen for the film were solid, and while you may remember I’m not a big fan of choral music, I enjoyed a choir singing beautifully in a church. It’s surprising to hear religious music in a mainstream Christmas movie.
In fact, this film is very respectful of Christianity, also portraying a nativity scene and a character praying. Family relationships are portrayed positively too, with characters wanting reconciliation when issues arise. There are a few genuinely touching moments.
When it comes to family suitability for kids, there’s a very small amount of questionable content in the movie (language, drinking), but the positive messages counteract that enough to make Home Alone suitable for teens at least, and maybe just a bit younger.
My favorite scenes of the film included John Candy in a small role reminiscent of his Planes, Trains and Automobiles character, as are the scenes themselves. Catherine O’Hara is in those scenes and is good throughout as Kevin’s mom. She’s had a strong comedic career, and she’s a regular in the fantastic mockumentaries written and directed by Christopher Guest.
I don’t hate Home Alone any more. I can’t say I love it, and I still maintain it’s highly overrated. But it’s actually pretty good. 😜
Onwards!
+ last viewed (3) 2026-01-06, HDX7, 1.85v, 2M
+ first viewed 1990-12, ThX, 1.85, 2
+ 👨👩👧👦🎈⛄🎄🎅🍌🥸
Family Suitability Detail
+ ✅2️⃣ OK for teens and adults. (Grades 7+) | PGa
+ 😡+3 😵💫+2 🤬+1^ 🫢+3 🫣+3
Judeo-Christian Values Detail
+ ❎2️⃣ Good/Moderately Favorable
+ ✝️ +4 ➕✝️✝️😇😇😇❤️❤️🩸🩸🩸 ➖(🔮)
+ ✡️ +2 ➕(✡️)🌗🌗😠😠 ➖(🔮)
+ 🗽 -0 ➕🚓 ➖(🔮)☠️
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Originally posted to text group 2024-12-18
Re-reviewed and updated 2026-01-09
Note from Rick Retro: This review was originally posted December 18, 2024 to a select group of friends and family via a text group. We have roughly five times as many subscribers in our community now, so I am working on formatting and uploading all those old reviews to Substack for all of you and future subscribers as well.
At that time, I had not completely developed my full review format, so I am also re-reviewing most of these works to match the format of my newer reviews. Since these posts were almost entirely holiday themed from a 2024 Christmas Tour, I am now uploading these reviews as part of a 2025 Christmas Tour, all intended to get my archives completed while giving new subscribers a chance to experience older reviews on a measured basis.
But if you’d rather just start from the original beginning, visit this post and follow the “Next (all sections) ➡️” links at the end of each post, until you arrive at this one, where that link will be dead, until I upload the next post from our text group archives 😉. When the next post is not yet available, there will be a link to the post that is “Next Available, skipping over text group posts not yet uploaded ➡️”
The first post to Substack after the current “Text Group Gaps” of posts I have not yet uploaded can be found here. From this post, following the “Next (all sections) ➡️” links will bring you all the way to the most current post.
This note will disappear when the next text group post is added, and this review takes its rightful spot in our archives. For now, I hope you enjoy this look into Christmas past!