Home Alone

Directed by	Chris Columbus
Produced by	John Hughes
Written by	John Hughes
Starring	Macaulay Culkin Joe Pesci Daniel Stern John Heard Catherine O'Hara
Music by	John Williams
Cinematography	Julio Macat
Editing by	Raja Gosnell
Studio	Hughes Entertainment
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	November 16, 1990
Running time	102 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$18 million
Box office	$476,684,675

Home Alone is a 1990 American family comedy film written and produced by John Hughes and directed by Chris Columbus. The film stars Macaulay Culkin as Kevin McCallister, an eight-year-old boy, who is mistakenly left behind when his family flies to Paris for their Christmas vacation. While initially relishing time by himself, he is later greeted by two would-be burglars played by Daniel Stern and Joe Pesci. Kevin eventually manages to outwit them with a series of booby traps. The film also features Catherine O'Hara, John Heard, Devin Ratray, Roberts Blossom, and John Candy. As of 2009, Home Alone was the highest grossing comedy of all time.

Plot

The McCallister family prepares to spend Christmas in Paris, gathering at Peter and Kate's home in a suburb of Chicago the night before their flight. Eight-year-old Kevin, their youngest son, finds himself the subject of ridicule from his siblings and cousins. After getting into an argument with his older brother Buzz, he is sent to the third floor bedroom of the house, where he wishes his family would disappear. During the night, a power outage resets the alarm clocks and causes the family to oversleep. In the confusion and rush to reach the airport on time, Kevin is left behind and the family does not realize it until they are already airborne. Once in Paris, his mother and father desperately try to book a flight home.
Meanwhile, Kevin wakes up to find the house empty and is overjoyed to find that his wish came true. He practices shooting with Buzz's BB gun, jumps on the bed, watches a gangster film, and eats a large serving of junk food, but in the process accidentally wrecks Buzz's room. However, he finds himself frightened by the appearance of the Chicago Police Department called by his parents to check on him; his next door neighbor "Old Man" Marley, who was rumored to have murdered his family many years earlier; and the appearance of The Wet Bandits, Harry Lyme and Marv Merchants, who are breaking into other vacant houses on the block.
On Christmas Eve, Kevin overhears Harry and Marv discussing plans for breaking into his house that night. After conversing with a Santa Claus impersonator and watching a local choir perform in a church, he comes across Marley. The two of them talk, and he learns that Marley is in fact a very nice man and the rumors about him are not true. He tells Kevin he is watching the choir because his granddaughter is in it, and he never gets to see her because he and his son have not spoken in years after a big argument they had. Kevin advises him to reconcile with his son.
After leaving the church, Kevin heads home and sets up various booby traps inside the house. Harry and Marv break in. After the two spring every trap in the house, Kevin flees to the second floor of the house and dials 9-1-1. They chase him out of the house and he flees to the vacant neighboring home. The Wet Bandits catch him when he runs to the top of the stairs and hang him on a coat hook on the door. Marley sneaks up behind them and knocks them out with a snow shovel and takes Kevin home. Shortly after, Harry and Marv are arrested.
Kevin wakes up the next morning and is disappointed to see that his family is still gone. He then hears Kate enter the house, calling for him. He goes downstairs and the two of them meet and reconcile. Immediately after, the rest of the McCallisters, having traveled directly from Paris to Chicago, arrive. Kevin keeps silent about his encounter with Harry and Marv, although Peter finds Harry's missing gold tooth and wonders what it is. Kevin and Buzz have a moment of reconciliation. He then goes over to the window and sees Marley greeting his son and his family. As he is hugging his granddaughter, he looks up to see Kevin. He waves at him and Kevin waves back, smiling. He watches as Marley heads inside with his family. Buzz interrupts him by calling out, "Kevin, what did you do to my room?", at which point Kevin runs off and the film ends.

Reaction

Box office

In its opening weekend, Home Alone grossed $17 million in 1,202 theaters, averaging $14,211 per site and just 6% of the final total. Home Alone proved so popular that it stayed in theaters well past the Christmas season. It was the #1 film at the box office for 12 straight weeks, from its release weekend of November 16–18, 1990 through the weekend of February 1–3, 1991. It remained a top 10 draw at the box office until the weekend of April 26 that year, which was well past Easter weekend. It made two more appearances in the top 10 (the weekend of May 31-June 2 and the weekend of June 14–16) before finally falling out of the top 10. The film 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 Book of Records as the highest grossing live-action comedy ever.
By the time it had run its course in theaters, Home Alone was the third highest grossing film of all time, according to the home video box. In total, its cinema run grossed $477,561,243 worldwide.

Critical response

Home Alone received mixed reviews from film critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a "Rotten" score of 54%, based on 41 reviews, with an average rating of 5.2/10. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from film critics, it has a rating score of 63, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a 2 ¹⁄₂ out of 4-star rating. He criticized the plot as "so implausible that it makes it hard for [him] to really care about the plight of the kid [Kevin]." He praised Culkin's performance and compared the elaborate booby-traps in the film to Rube Goldberg. Although Caryn James of The New York Times complained that the film's first half is "flat and unsurprising as its cute little premise suggests", she praised the second half for its slapstick humor. She also praised the conversation between Kevin and Marley, as well as the film's final scenes. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "D" grade, criticizing the film for its "sadistic festival of adult-bashing". Gleiberman said that "[John] Hughes is pulling our strings as though he'd never learn to do anything else." Variety praised the film for its cast. Jeanne Cooper of The Washington Post praised the film for its comedic approach  Hal Hinson, also of The Washington Post, praised Chris Columbus's direction and Culkin's acting.