In the mid '80's, John Hughes' name was synonymous with witty humorous teen comedies, with hits like Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink tucked under his belt. This began to change in the early '90's though, when Hughes shifted his screenplays away from the plights and emotions of teenagers and became preoccupied with kids hitting adults in the foreheads with bricks and the like, creating such poor and forgettable films as Dutch, Curly Sue, and Baby's Day Out. With this shift toward cartoonish violence, I was quite surprised to find both thoughtful Christmas reflections and a genuine heart in Hughes' Home Alone. Of course, in Home Alone, Joe Pesci does get shot in his manhood with an air rifle, but in the long run this is negligible... to everyone but Pesci I would assume.

The young, and, at the time, still single Macauley Culkin rose to stardom thanks to his portrayal of Kevin McAllister, a young Winnetka boy who, thanks to an untimely power outage, is left home alone as his family and relatives fly to Paris.

Culkin, who, prior to this film was known only as the kid in Uncle Buck who noticed John Candy's nose hair, shines as McAllister, expressing a wide range of emotions, naiveté, frustration, and determination, while captivating the lens of the camera. Most child actors rely on cuteness, or their familial relationship with a high profile producer or director to rise to the forefront of Hollywood--I'm still trying to figure out who Austin O'Brien knows. Very rarely do they journey to the A-list based on the caliber of their performances, but Culkin, like Bobby Driscoll some 50 years previously, does just this, delivering a wonderfully grounded and realistic performance for someone not older enough to venture onto the bumper cars at Great America.

The genius of this movie though isn't the way in which Culkin protects his house against the sticky fingered, "wet bandits", played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern, but comes in the way that Culkin adapts to his situation alone, gains a level of much needed independence, and realizes the importance of his family.

Home Alone opens with director Chris Columbus introducing Culkin to the viewer as the most helpless member of the McAllister clan. Culkin hasn't a clue how to pack a bag for the trip to France, doesn't stand up for himself when he is insulted by siblings, and reacts to the fact that his older brother, Buzz, has eaten all of his cheese pizza by physically attacking Buzz, a move, coupled with the fact that Buzz is roughly the size of Akron, Ohio, that is not rational or practical in any sense. After Culkin has been left home alone though, he is forced to begin fending for himself--bear in mind that in the context of this film, as opposed to say, The Edge, this constitutes buying laundry detergent--which enables him to grow as a person, Culkin becoming more self-sufficient while also learning to deal with his fears and problems in a logical fashion. That, and he also learns how to make weapons out of paint cans, micro-machines, and Christmas ornaments.

As Home Alone draws to a close, Culkin does engage in one final battle against Pesci and Stern, Columbus making use of several well designed and shot cartoonish stunts, that, despite being geared for 6 year olds, I did find amusing. However, unlike Home Alone 2 and Home Alone 3, this war between child and bandits is not the focal point of Hughes script.

With Hughes recent screenplays for the movies Career Opportunities, the remake of Miracle on 34th Street, and 101 Dalmatians, Home Alone stands out as being his best creation of the decade. Despite running visual gags and a proliferation of rather entertaining violence, thanks to a very touching look into the relationship between Culkin and his elderly next-door neighbor, Hughes has captured the true spirit of Christmas in this film.