This article comes from Den of Geek UK.
Gremlins is great and Elf is ace. Bad Santa is bitchin’ and The Muppets Christmas Carol is sensational, inspirational, celebrational, and Muppetational. Die Hard is dead good, Miracle On 34th Street is magic, and It’s A Wonderful Life is truly, erm, wonderful.
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I’m sure Jackie Chan would approve of the way in which every object and area of the McCallister mansion is adapted so that it can be used as a weapon or platform on which to stage a stunt set-piece. When those glorious sequences do happen they tend to unfold according to the laws of cartoon physics, Harry and Marv flying high and getting whacked up like live-action duplicates of Wile E Coyote or Tom to Kevin’s Roadrunner or Jerry.
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The Looney Tunes aspect goes beyond the third-act spectacle and is deeply ingrained in the characterisation as all the cast around Kevin are painted in thick broadstrokes. After all, folk seldom wants subtlety during Christmas and “The Wet Bandits” are the perfect pair of dumb villains for both this particular tale and for the season. Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern are pantomime boo-hiss baddies par excellence and, besides the despicable scheming and genuine threat, they provide terrific physical and verbal comedy and an odd, ugly charm.
Watching Pesci spit out lines like “You bomb me with one more can, kid, and I’ll snap off your cajones and boil ’em in motor oil!” is truly a Christmas present to treasure. Off the top of my head – a head that hasn’t been torched by a hidden homemade flamethrower – I can’t recall any movie villain duo who are as much fun and who have as much chemistry as Harry and Marv.
Then the pre-eminent imbecile antagonists are treated appropriately and we rejoice in happy holiday schadenfreude as their faces are smashed with irons and paintbuckets, their bodies are glued-and-feathered and they’re put out cold on ice, repeatedly. The result is maximum pain for maximum pleasure, punctuated by the smarting, infuriated Pesci doing his best Muttley impression.
“Rushza-fruzzsha-vrusszha,” indeed, and then there are also the supplementary villains of this tinsel-festooned tableau – the McCallister family themselves. They too are about as subtle as the bricks that Kev lobs at his nemeses in his later New York jaunt. His parents – the unfeasibly wealthy and virile Catherine O’Hara and John Heard – aren’t so terrible, because parents can’t be all bad. (“Don’t you feel like a heel flying first class with all the kids back in coach?” the soon-to-be-very sorry and devastated Mom McCallister asks her husband moments before her innate maternal empathetic-telepath connection kicks in.)
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Their offspring and extended family, however, are a band of archetypal awful relations gift-wrapped for intolerable December get-togethers. Every single individual in the group of umpteen siblings and cousins is an obnoxious meanie and there are way too many of them, so we can well understand poor Kevin’s oxymoronic mission statement, “when I grow up and get married, I’m living alone!” You only need look at the way they glare at him after the pizza-fight-and-spilled-Pepsi sequence – the low-angle pan shot showing a pantheon of faces expressing nothing but utter contempt for the runt in their pack.
The most disturbing is Buzz (Devin Ratray) – the ugly older brother who pounds on and humiliates our hero and gets off lightly every time. This dumb jockstrap is so insecure about his naff haircut and his sexual frustration that he picks on the black (erm, blonde) sheep of the family to make himself feel better. Also note his pet tarantula (dread-inspiring power symbol), stash of badly-hidden Playboy mags and his self-appointed role as scare-story teller and terrorist-in-chief in this unit. Buzz is pretty much the manifest dictionary definition of ‘total prick’ – yes, it’s in my dictionary – and his serial assaults on mostly-innocent Kevin earn him victory over the Grinch as Yuletide’s Apex A-Hole.
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As for the rest, standouts would be cousin Fuller (played by Macaulay’s brother Kieran Culkin) who would deliberately wet the bed in order to upset our the beleaguered lead protagonist. The very worst of them all though is the irredeemable Uncle Frank – a hyperbole of a jerk whose only saving grace is the sing-along-a-shower-scene in the sequel (“Awwww, you’re cookin’, Frankie!”).
Altogether, when contrasted with those odious, mean-spirited figures, Kevin emerges as a pleasant young man of intelligence, wit, pluck and compassion. Nifty dialogue, considerate deeds and Culkin’s natural charisma cumulatively secure our sympathy and endear him to the audience as a guardian angel, permanently etched into posterity in that pose echoing Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream .
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Still, despite his privilege, the youngest of the McCallister dynasty is clearly underappreciated and abused as an inferior relation and there’s something of Cinderella about his plight. His wish coming true, he defies his domineering relatives, gets to ball it up as he pleases and live his dream for a magic moment. With him we indulge ourselves in the fairytale of carefree time that is the Christmas holiday – where you’re encouraged to do nothing but stay at home, play around, eat absolute junk and watch old movies (namely, the classic gangster pastiche Angels With Filthy Souls) all day long without any sense of guilt or anxiety.
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Now, as my gift to Den Of Geek readers, I wanted to share my love of the ‘Best Christmas Movie of All Time’ and unwrap its magnificence. Hey, maybe “Later we’ll share some pumpkin pie and we’ll do some carolling,” to quote the lyrics of “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” which Kevin plays at his fake house party to convince Harry and Marv that he isn’t actually home alone. (It works, because those dopes are stupid enough to be fooled by a record player and a cardboard cut-out of Michael Jordan.)
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It’s a sugar rush fantasy free from overbearing adult-control, where the miniature hero gets to enjoy god-like powers of creation and destruction in the house of which they are now master. Said house has become a funhouse of amusement and delirium – a juvenile obstacle course-cum-action movie set suitably decked up in the traditional seasonal pieces and paraphernalia.
James Clayton is wishing you a Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal… and a Happy New Year. You can visit his website or follow him on Twitter.
