20th Century Fox (1990) Starring: Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern, John Heard and Catherine O’Hara.
Seeing this classic comedy at Christmas
was as good as having your birthday right after the festivities.
Although it was released around Christmas, the unavailability of
cinemas in Nigeria at that period ensured that it took a while before
it gets listed in the then prominent VHS video cassette rental outlets.
Luckily I got to see the movie on a Christmas day and it was the toast
for me that year. It was so good that I wanted to see it over and over
again.
The story line
A large American family accidentally
left its youngest member Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) out of a Christmas Eve
trip to Paris. The 8-year-old, who had always been an easy target of
ridicule for his siblings, believed he made his family disappear after
he had wished he had no family the previous night. However, a supposed
welcome development took another turn when he realised he is a
vulnerable sole occupant of a house targeted by two burglars (Joe Pesci
and Daniel Stern). Initially he got scared but eventually decided
employ the use of booby traps to protect his home.
The thrills
Seeing an eight year-old bamboozle two
full grown adults to protect his territory was pure delight. Even
though the stunts now appear a little campy and exaggerated out of
proportion, it wasn’t short of amusement in its time. The fun
associated with watching the idiotic burglars fall, roll, get burnt and
hammered means viewers care less if the acts are logical or not. Even
though the movie was mainly about humour, it silently teaches bravery.
And for a long time, after seeing Kevin successfully confront these
burglars, my friends and I also felt heroic enough to brave a
particular silly bully.
The spin-offs
Home Alone turned out to be the highest
grossing movie of 1990 with a revenue of over $400 million and
inevitably a franchise sprang up. Sequels, ‘Home Alone 2: Lost in New
York’, ‘Home Alone 3’ and ‘Home Alone 4’, were made with the third
instalment being a totally unrelated movie and fourth retaining a
couple of the original characters but none of the original casts. Also
a Home Alone video game was developed for a plethora of home consoles
including the Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Drives, Super
Nintendo, the Sega Game Gear and the Nintendo Game Boy.
