Viewing Thoughts: Home Alone, probably one of my favorite yuletide films and a good way to start off the day. I'm watching it on the Fox Movie Channel which is trying to make it their A Christmas Story by showing it non-stop for 24 hours or so. I can see why they would go with this comparison. Both are kinda films about the follies of childhood. Mind you, along the same lines, A Christmas Story is a superior film and does have the added benefit of having a much more nostalgic feeling to it. While Home Alone is a much more artificial film, I am not saying it's a bad movie. Oh, in no way am I saying that. It does have the better score of the two but then again, it is John Williams. It is an incredibly fun film when you're a kid and if you were a kid when it came out, it still carries a case of the nostalgias. I remember seeing it with my dad and sister when I was a kid and I look back on that fondly to this day. However, it seems a lot shorter than it actually is. I mean, seriously, it's just a little over 100 minutes with credits. However, it's a kid's movie and kid's movies should not be all that long.
Catherine O'Hara deserved a supporting actress nod for her role as Kate McCallister. She really is the heart of this movie. At first, she is a typical mom, if a bit too snippy with Kevin but she's under stress and Kevin is kinda a jerk at the beginning. However, once she finds out that she has accidentally abandoned her child, she instantly goes into mother bear mode and flies to protect her son, traveling the earth, going to immense trouble to do so. It doesn't hurt that the actress playing her is incredibly talented as well. Catherine O'Hara is amazing, no matter what the film but here she shines, is kinda dead-pan, and throughout, believable. She accomplishes it all with the utmost of effort and sure, if she had patience, she would have gotten home the exact same time but that matters little because she tried, worked against fate, and endured polka just to get what she wanted: to get back to her son.
Harry and Marv, the wet bandits, should be dead. There is no way around that. Mind you they become major league idiots in the second film and become immensely more accident prone but even in the first film, they should, by no small miracle, not be alive. We're talking falling down the stairs, getting hit in the head repeatedly, third degree burns, rusty nails through the foot, and not counting any bites from the tarantula. These two function as if they're in peak health the entire time and somehow are able to beat a kid to the phone elsewhere. The fact that they're able to recover, get themselves cleaned up so they can escape and get on the run to New York in a just a year shows these two must be superhuman. Kevin bests two people who have become gifted with invulnerability by the gods of thievery and both times brought them to justice, three if you count the pure crappiness that is Home Alone 4 but that involves acknowledging their existence so we'll say two. Harry and Marv, nearly invincible but still doomed to be beaten by a pre-teen.
Noted Commercials: No commercials. The problem with watching something like this on a movie channel. Not going to be repeating that mistake too much today.
Late Christmas Ideas: I would actually say a copy of Home Alone would be grand. Double points if it's on blu-ray.
The Tally
Mountain Dews Left: 11
Energy Drinks Left: 4
Cups of Coffee drank: 0
Sanity Rating (1 being an hour of isolation, 10 being a year): 3
1 comment:
Catherine O'Hara is awesome in any movie she does.
Post a Comment