Remember Home Alone? Remember the part where Kevin gets mad at his family and wishes he didn’t have to spend Christmas with them and then his wish comes true? (This time, he makes it to the airport but, somehow, lands alone in the Big Apple.) Remember how he tells the store cashier that he’s “only 8 years old so, of course,” his mother is with him? (This time he reminds the hotel clerk that there’s no way a ten-year-old could check into the Plaza Hotel by himself.) Remember how he is both scared and contemptuous of Marley, the elderly, slightly mysterious neighbor who eventually becomes his friend? (This time it’s Pigeon Lady, a bird-covered Eliza Doolittle-looking Brenda Fricker.) Remember how Kevin sets himself up in bed with a remote control and all the junk food a kid could carry home? (This time room service does all the carrying.) Remember how Kevin fools the grownups into thinking someone is home by showing the silhouette of grownups moving in front of a window? (This time it’s an inflatable clown behind a shower curtain.) Remember how he becomes a miniature Rambo, physically abusing and foiling the hapless burglars at every turn? (This time he does it again, even managing to staple-gun Marv in the face as well as the other more “humorous” areas of the body.) Remember how Home Alone wasn’t very funny or socially redeeming? (Bingo!) The empowerment of children, in the purest, most innocent sense, is a noble concept. We all want our children to be self-confident, independent and competent – in an age-appropriate way. But what children really need is to be protected and championed by the adults in their lives. Home Alone‘s adults are not capable of that behavior, nor are they worthy of respect, as Kevin so graphically illustrates. The John Hughes script must have taken him all of thirty minutes to write – simply a matter of a few name and location changes. It wasn’t a good script the first time, either. Marge says the moral of the movie is that no one should have more than four kids. I say the movie has no morals. So be a champ, protect your child from this brutal cartoon of a movie. If you don’t, you may end up like Marv and Harry (Stern and Pesci) – suffering the consequences.
This article appears in November 20 • 1992 (Cover).