Movie Info

Home Alone is the highly successful and beloved family comedy about a young boy named Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) who is accidentally left behind when his family takes off for a vacation in France over the holiday season. Once he realizes they've left him "home alone," he learns to fend for himself and, eventually has to protect his house against two bumbling burglars (Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern) who are planning to rob every house in Kevin's suburban Chicago neighborhood. Though the film's slapstick ending may be somewhat violent, Culkin's charming presence helped the film become one of the most successful ever at the time of its release.  Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi

Home Alone 4

At the McCallisters' house, Peter is about to get divorced from Kate and announces that he's living with his new and rich girlfriend, Natalie at her mansion. He tells his three children, Buzz, Megan andKevin, that they are hosting the visit of a royal family and invites everyone to spend Christmas with him and Natalie. After initially refusing, Kevin takes his father up on his offer after being tormented by Buzz.

Kevin enjoys his time at Natalie's mansion with his new bedroom, latest gadgets and his life. In the next morning, Natalie and Peter go out for a bit while Kevin stays at the mansion with Mr. Prescott. While Prescott makes Kevin a milkshake, he goes into the security room and gets caught by Prescott, who gives Kevin another chance. With Natalie and Peter still away, Kevin notices his old nemesis Marv, a remaining member of the Wet Bandits and new sidekick Vera outside the house. Kevin tries to get Mr. Prescott to answer the intercom, but unfortunately it doesn't work because Marv altered the security system. He then spies on them and drive them away by flooding the house, but Peter and Natalie arrive while Kevin is cleaning up and don`t believe Kevin's explanation, especially since Prescott claims to have seen nothing. Kevin then attempts to use the security camera footage to prove himself, but discovers that the camera had been turned off and is caught by Prescott, who Kevin now believes to be Marv and Vera's ally. Molly then appears and gets Kevin out of trouble. Peter and Natalie then realize they gave Kevin a hard time and decide to make him feel better, so the three of them decided to decorate the tree.

The next morning Peter and Kevin wake up and realize their tree was re-decorated because of Natalie. Kate, Buzz and Megan then decided to visit Kevin. Kate meets Natalie in person and Kevin shows the entire house to Buzz and Megan. At a party for the royal family while Peter and Natalie have gone to pick them up, Kevin notices Marv and Vera dressed up as caterers. Mr. Prescott warns Kevin about the night so he then tricks Mr. Prescott going into the freezer room locked and frozen in ice. Kevin then spies on Marv and Vera into his bedroom and hears them planning about kidnapping the royals; unfortunately for them, Kevin makes sure that their plan was a failure and has them fall out and break the window. The royal family are unable to attend the party because their flight was cancelled, so Peter and Natalie instead announce their engagement. Marv and Vera run back into the house and Kevin hits Marv with a frying pan, flips the table and get soup spilled on Marv and Vera; they then chase Kevin, causing him to accidentally ruin the party. Peter is angered at this event, still refusing to believe Kevin about the break-in he believes that Kevin is trying to end his relationship with Natalie.

Since no one believes him about the heist, Kevin decides to deal with matters himself, and sets booby traps for Marv and Vera. The next morning Peter and Natalie go get the royals and Kevin is left back at the house. Marv and Vera wake up and head to the house. Kevin tricks and locks Mr. Prescott in the basement, but then he discovers Marv and Vera's real ally is actually Molly, who turns out to be Marv's mother as well. Kevin gets locked in the basement; after apologizing to Mr. Prescott for misjudging him (and vice-versa), Kevin manages to escape through the dumbwaiter. He then traps Marv under the dumbwaiter and unleashes his traps on Marv and Vera. Then Molly appears; Kevin manages to trap her in the elevator and runs to his bedroom. At the airport, Peter gets worried about Kevin and goes back to Natalie's to check on him. Back in the basement, Mr. Prescott then manages to escape through the dumbwaiter as well to see if Kevin is alright. Just on the road, Kate, Buzz and Megan are on their way to save Kevin as well. Marv heads to the bedroom and ends up getting caught and stuck under the bookshelf. Kevin then plays a recording of Marv, making it sound like he's insulting Vera, which causes her to break up with him and argue; Marv then gets hit by Kevin's electric aircraft making him fall and rumble down the stairs. Marv and Vera are then tricked by Kevin with a secret wall switch, end up swinging from a chandelier, and they fall and are knocked unconscious. Molly, having escaped, grabs Kevin, but Mr. Prescott knocks her out with a serving tray. Then he and Kevin call the police.

As Peter, Kate, Buzz and Megan arrive, Kevin, with Buzz and Megan's help, chases Marv and Vera out of the house and trips them up. The royal family and Natalie arrive and Natalie is confused when she sees Marv, Vera and Molly getting arrested. An FBI agent reveals that Molly masterminded the plot to abduct the royal family. Prescott resigns and the royal family choose to spend their Christmas with the McCallisters instead of Natalie. Peter then breaks up with her and Natalie hyperventilates. The McCallisters embrace as the film ends.

All About Home Alone

Home Alone is a 1990 American Christmas 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.

Culkin was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, becoming the youngest actor ever to be nominated for the award at the age of 11. The film was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score.

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 911. 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 has sneaked up behind them and knocks them out with a snow shovel and takes Kevin home. Shortly after, they 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.

Cast

• Macaulay Culkin as Kevin McCallister: An eight-year-old who comes from a big family and usually gets into trouble with them. One night he wishes for them to disappear and gets his wish, but later on, he learns that it is not really fun being alone. He then defends his house from Harry and Marv by using booby traps.
• Joe Pesci as Harry Lyme: The short leader of the Wet Bandits who break into Kevin's house. He and his partner Marv hit houses that are unoccupied when their owners leave town and get information about their security systems by posing as police officers.
• Daniel Stern as Marv Merchants: The tall member of the Wet Bandits. He has a habit of leaving the water running wherever he and Harry commit burglaries.
• John Heard as Peter McCallister: Kevin's father.
• Catherine O'Hara as Kate McCallister: Kevin's mother.
• Devin Ratray as Buzz McCallister: Kevin's oldest brother.
• Hillary Wolf as Megan McCallister: Kevin's oldest sister.
• Angela Goethals as Linnie McCallister: Kevin's older sister.
• Michael C. Maronna as Jeff McCallister: Kevin's older brother.
• Gerry Bamman as Frank McCallister: Kevin's uncle.
• Terrie Snell as Leslie McCallister: Kevin's aunt.
• Jedidiah Cohen as Rod McCallister: One of Kevin's cousins.
• Senta Moses as Tracy McCallister: One of Kevin's cousins.
• Daiana Campeanu as Sondra McCallister: One of Kevin's cousins.
• Kieran Culkin as Fuller McCallister: One of Kevin's cousins. Kieran is Macaulay Culkin's younger brother in real life.
• Anna Slotky as Brooke McCallister: One of Kevin's cousins.
• Kristin Minter as Heather McCallister: Kevin's cousin and daughter of Rob McCallister.
• Roberts Blossom as Old Man Marley: A kind elderly man and a neighbor of the McCallisters who is said to have murdered his whole family, causing Kevin to run scared of him every time he sees him. He ultimately saves Kevin from Harry and Marv.
• John Candy as Gus Polinski: A member of a band (The Kenosha Kickers) whose flight is canceled due to the weather so he and his band have to catch a ride in a van. He offers to give Kate a ride to Chicago, since it is on the way to Milwaukee, and she accepts.
• Larry Hankin as Larry Balzak, a police sergeant who works in family crisis.
• Ralph Foody as Johnny the gangster in Angels with Filthy Souls
• Michael Guido as Snakes the other gangster in Angels with Filthy Souls
• Ken Hudson Campbell as Santa Claus
• Jim Ortlieb as Herb, the drugstore owner

Music

Main article: Home Alone (soundtrack)

The film score of Home Alone was composed by John Williams. 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 in 1990

Video release

The film was released on VHS in 1991 and included a mail-in rebate offer from Pepsi (a product prominently featured in the film).

It was first released on DVD in 1999 as a basic package, with no special features other than theatrical trailers for the film and its sequels. However, it was later re-released in 2006 as a "Family Fun Edition", which included a large number of extras (multiple trailers, deleted scenes, bloopers, commentary, behind-the-scenes featurettes, and more). A Blu-ray release of the Family Fun Edition followed in 2008.

Video games

The first Home Alone game was released in 1991. Home Alone video games were released for the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Sega Mega Drive, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and Sega Game Gear, the Game Boy, the Sega Master System, the Amiga and personal computers. The Home Alone game on the SNES used still images and character's voices from the film in its gameplay. It also features the characters from the film as well as new enemies created for the game including a fat gangster, ghosts, large rats and very large tarantulas. A video game titled Home Alone was released for the PlayStation 2 in 2006, but it was not released in the United States.

Sequels

The film was followed by a commercially successful sequel, the 1992 release Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, which brings back the original cast from the first film Home Alone 3, released in 1997, has completely different actors, and a different storyline. A fourth film followed in 2002, Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House. This film features some of the same characters featured in the first two films, but with a new cast and a storyline that does not fall into the same continuity

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Reception (Home Alone)

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.

The film received an Academy Award for Best Original Score nomination written by John Williams.^{[citation needed]}

American Film Institute Lists

• AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs - Nominated
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains:
• Harry Lime & Marv Merchants - Nominated Villains