Kitch's Top 5 Christmas Movie Countdown - #5 Home Alone

Released: November 16, 1990

Starring: Macaulay Calkin, John Candy, Daniel Stern & Joe Pesci

Director: Chris Columbus

Producer: John Hughes

Writer: John Hughes

Music By: John Williams

The classic – and, for my generation, definitive Christmas movie – directed by Christopher Columbus, written by the late, great John Hughes, and blessed with a timeless and impeccable score by the mater of such things, John Williams. 

Who can forget the tale of the obnoxious/annoying/charming Kevin McAlister (Macaulay Calkin), whose family is in such a rush to get to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport to catch a flight to Paris for the holidays that they accidentally leave him behind. All well and good, except that the notorious Wet Bandits, Marv and Harry (Daniel Stern and Joe Pesci), are in the neighbourhood and looking to cash in over the Christmas break.

So ensues a series of hilarious set pieces – including the pizza delivery, Angels with Filthy Souls, Old Man Marley, and John Candy’s wise-yet-clueless Gus Polinski, lead singer of The Kenosha Kickers – that lead up to a final showdown in the McAlister house between Kevin and the two bandits, featuring an imaginative (and comically violent) fun house of traps and tricks…and, towards the end, a little help from Old Man Marley, who isn’t the creepy serial killer that everyone assumes he is. 

As obnoxious as Kevin was in the beginning, you couldn’t help but want him to win over the bad guys, and, even to this day, some of the things he does to them – like the scene where Marv steps on the nail – still make me cringe in horror. And the funny scenes still make me style. John Hughes, as is his way, wrote a tremendous movie.

The heart of the movie is family togetherness at Christmastime, and although there’s plenty of comical violence throughout, the underlying message that shines through, particularly towards the end, is family and how important your family is, especially during the festive season.

I can’t say a bad word about John Candy in anything, and I thought he was fantastic as Gus Polinski, the leader of the polka group Kenosha Kickers, who, according to Gus, had a number of hits in Wisconsin over the years. He’s at Scranton, Pennsylvania, where Kevin’s mother Kate (Catherine O’Hara) has reached after leaving Paris in a hurry, and when Kate is told there are no flights home to the Windy City, he offers to give her a ride, as the band has a rental van and they’re planning to drive home to Milwaukee via Chicago.

Home Alone was a major success for 20^th Century Fox, taking $17 million USD on opening weekend, and remaining the highest-grossing film (in American cinemas) for twelve straight weeks following it’s release over the November 16-18 1990 weekend, and remained in the Top Ten through April of 1991. Incredibly, it’s completed cinema run grossed $477,561,243 worldwide. 

The wonderfully nostalgic instrumental piece that John Williams created – “Somewhere in my Memory” – especially for the film is present throughout the sensational score. John Williams, clearly, is a musical genius.

No wonder they made a sequel – and more about that later.