November 16, 1990: “Home Alone” Premieres

November 16, 1990: Home Alone premieres, becoming the biggest Christmas movie ever, box-office-wise. I am convinced that the reason Rocky V didn't do so well isn't that it was a bad movie, but because it was released on the same day as Home Alone.

The film was written and produced by John Hughes. It was directed by Chris Columbus, who says he is not descended from Christopher Columbus. But the film's star, Macaulay Culkin, only 10 years old when the film was released, is the son of actor Kit Culkin, the niece of actress Bonnie Bedelia, and the brother of actors Kieran Culkin and Rory Culkin.

Macualay played Kevin McAllister, who is growing up in a large family in the northern suburb of Chicago. After all, John Hughes is involved. The McAllister house is in Winnetka, 2 miles northwest of the Page house in Planes, Trains and Automobiles, in Kenilworth; and 6 miles southeast of the Frye house in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, in Highland Park. The Bueller house is in Long Beach, California.

The family is preparing to spend Christmas in Paris, but a power outage causes them to miss their alarm on Christmas Eve, and, in their rush to get ready, a kid from next door comes over, causing Kevin's mother, Kate (Catherine O'Hara), to miscount, and think they have everybody before they leave for the airport.

After having been ridiculed for his immaturity his whole life, and having had a bad night the night before, Kevin realizes he has the house to himself, and can do whatever he wants, with no rules. Oddly, he gets bored with this rather quickly, and actually starts to miss his family.

Kate is in midair with the rest of the family, over the Atlantic Ocean, before she realizes Kevin isn't with them. As with Steve Martin's Neal Page in Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Kate has a hard time getting back to Chicago, due to it being a holiday and flights being booked up. And the phone lines are still down in Winnetka, so she can't even call. And, as with Neal, she ends up getting home with help from a character played by John Candy.

I wish Candy had lived. Given the tropes of his movies, and those of Tom Hanks' movies, surely, at some point, there would have been a movie where Candy would have gotten a stranded Hanks home.

Meanwhile, Harry and Marv (played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern, respectively), a pair of thieves known as the Wet Bandits, had been scouting out houses to rob over the holiday season. Realizing that Kevin is home alone, they target his house.

Afraid, Kevin goes to church, and prays to get his family back. He meets another neighbor, Old Man Marley (Blossom Roberts), rumored to have murdered his family. He assures Kevin that it's not true. He's there to watch his granddaughter in the choir, but he's never met her, because he and his son, the girl's father, are estranged. Wishing his own family were back, Kevin tells him he should try again to reconcile.

Kevin "breaks the fourth wall," saying, "It's my house. I have to defend it!" So he booby-traps the house, and the result is a lot of slapstick. But it only succeeds for so long, and it looks like the Bandits, now infuriated to the point where whatever loot they could take is secondary to revenge -- one of them is played by Joe Pesci, after all -- are actually going to kill Kevin. But Marley, having heard the ruckus, knocks them out with his shovel -- allegedly, the murder weapon from the rumor about him. The phone lines back up, the police arrive, and take the Bandits away.

The next day, Christmas Day, Kate makes it home. Shortly thereafter, because a direct flight had opened up, so does the rest of the family. Kevin doesn't tell them what happened, although it's reasonable to presume that the police soon did. The film ends with Kevin seeing Marley reconciling with his family.

On an episode of Seinfeld, George Costanza (Jason Alexander) admits to never having watched Home Alone, and watches it at Jerry's apartment. Jerry comes in just as the closing credits are rolling, and sees George crying. "You're crying over Home Alone?" he asks. George says, "The old man got to me!"

Given the similarities between their improvisations, and the basic immaturity of each, there is a fan theory that John McClane from Die Hard is Kevin McAllister from Home Alone, all grown up. But the technology levels of each film make this impossible. I think it's a desperation move, from people who want us to believe that Die Hard is a Christmas movie.

The film was so successful, it became a franchise. In 1992, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York was released. Much of it takes place at the Plaza Hotel, then owned by Donald Trump, who insisted on being in the movie in exchange for using the Plaza as a filming location. Therefore, the Wet Bandits are not the most evil people in the movie.

Home Alone 3 was released in 1997, but had none of the actors from the 1st 2 films, and there is no effort to pretend it's the same characters. While the kid is left home alone due to having chicken pox, the idea of booby-trapping the house to protect it from crooks is roughly the same. So, basically, Halloween 3. At least Speed 2: Cruise Control had Sandra Bullock.

Every film since has been made-for-TV. Home Alone 4 aired on ABC in 2002. Kevin is back, but Culkin isn't: The character is played by Mike Weinberg. Only one of the Wet Bandits is, Marv, and is now played by French Stewart. Not only have the Bandits separated, but so have Kevin's parents.

The ABC Family Channel (now known as Freeform) aired Home Alone: The Holiday Heist in 2012. As with HA 3, no effort was made to connect it with the Kevin character. A family moves from California to Maine, home State of Stephen King, and one of the kids believes the house is haunted. So, in a mash-up of Home Alone and Ghostbusters, he sets traps to catch the ghosts. He ends up catching thieves instead.

Disney+ aired Home Sweet Home Alone in 2021. It's basically a remake of the original film, but with different characters, the only returnee being Devin Ratray as Kevin's brother Buzz, now a police officer.

Speaking of "buzzes": In 2018, actor Ryan Reynolds smoked some marijuana, and his stoned-out haze gave him the idea to write Stoned Alone, a sequel where Kevin, now in college but a stoner, is so high he misses his flight for a ski vacation, and thinks thieves have broken in, and so the whole thing starts all over again. Nobody wanted the idea, and, as of November 16, 2022, it "remains in development hell."

Every so often, now 42, does a TV commercial that calls on him to copy his face-slapping yell from the original film. And Capital One has done a series of commercials where Catherine O'Hara has lost Kevin again, only this time it's actor Kevin Hart, who had already done a few commercials for the bank. Part of the joke is that Hart isn't much taller than Kevin McAllister was in 1990. (Hart is 5-foot-4. Fully grown, Culkin is 5-foot-7.)

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November 16, 1990 was a Friday. Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. There were 8 games played in the NBA:

* The New Jersey Nets lost to the Detroit Pistons, 105-96 at the Brendan Byrne Arena at the Meadowlands.

* The Boston Celtics beat the Utah Jazz, 114-89 at the Boston Garden.

* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Washington Bullets, 115-102 in overtime at The Spectrum in Philadelphia.

* The Charlotte Hornets beat the Atlanta Hawks, 119-109 at The Omni in Atlanta.

* The Dallas Mavericks beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 99-86 at the Reunion Arena in Dallas.

* The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 99-94 at The Coliseum in the Cleveland suburb of Richfield, Ohio.

* The Indiana Pacers beat the Miami Heat, 106-80 at the Market Square Arena in Indianapolis.

* And the Phoenix Suns beat the Los Angeles Clippers, 121-110 in overtime at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

There were 4 games played in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers beat the Winnipeg Jets, 6-4 at the Winnipeg Arena.

* The New York Islanders lost to the Vancouver Canucks, 3-2 at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver.

* The Chicago Blackhawks beat the Washington Capitals, 4-3 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland.

* And the Edmonton Oilers beat the Buffalo Sabres, 4-2 at the Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton.

And in New Jersey high school football, my Alma Mater, East Brunswick, beat Sayreville, 20-8 at War Memorial Stadium in Sayreville, to wrap up the Greater Middlesex Conference Red Division title. We would lose in the Semifinal of the Central Jersey Group IV Playoffs.