Home Alone, released in 1990, is a movie about a young boy named Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin), who is left home alone while the rest of his family heads to France for the Christmas season.  The movie starts with last minute packing, so things are rushed and tensions run high.  Kevin says some things he will later regret.  The family leaves the next morning, and all day something is bugging Mrs. McCallister.  Maybe we could call it mother’s intuition.  About halfway across the ocean, she realizes they left Kevin back at the house.  Meanwhile at home, Kevin is enjoying the good life and doing everything he was not allowed to do before.  Christmas is approaching, and the “Wet Bandits,” Marv Merchants and Harry Lyme, (Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern) plan on robbing every house in the very rich neighborhood.  Kevin figures this out and devises a plan (Operation Ho Ho Ho!) to thwart the bad guys.

Home Alone is an entertaining movie that should really be watched and enjoyed by families during the Holiday Season.  Personally, I believe it can be enjoyable for kids from five years old to ninety-five years old.  It would be very hard to “outgrow” this movie.

Home Alone focuses on important things in our lives like family, forgiveness, and even courage.  Most of this goes right over our heads, however, when we watch two adult nit-wits falling into a second grader’s traps.  The movie even has a scene where Kevin gives advice to a new friend, Marley, who has not talked to his family for many years.  It is at this point that we see how much Kevin misses his own family and wants them to come home.

Home Alone, written and produced by John Hughes was one of the highest grossing comedies of all time.  Carefully directed by Chris Columbus, the actors and actresses display the right emotions while making it look effortless.  The chemistry between Pesci and Stern is highly comical.  The bickering, fighting, and come backs between them keeps you laughing.  Sometimes, it gets to be that they look less scary then real robbers should.  Macaulay Culkin was probably one of the best kid actors out there.  He plays the part of Kevin better than anyone else ever could.  When he is supposed to be scared, he is, when he is supposed to look happy and excited he does, and when he tells off his mom in the beginning of the movie, it makes me wonder if he did that a lot in real life too.  He was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor- Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.  This made him the youngest actor, only eleven years old, ever to be nominated for this award.

Home Alone, though highly entertaining, has a clearly fictional plot.  While funny, it is unbelievable as well as frightening that a mother could leave her own child behind.  Once you can get past this preposterous discrepancy, the movie is highly amusing and comical.  The chemistry between characters, hilarious booby traps, and happy ending make it a great Christmas movie, but an even better family film.