3. Home Alone (1990)
It’s his house, and he has to defend it.
Home Alone turned Macaulay Culkin into a world-wide megastar of the 1990s (before he went off the wagon – seems to be a trend on this list) and its easy to see why. He displays an incredible amount of charisma from such a young age as he does battle with Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern in this hilarious cat and mouse game. Stern and Pesci are fantastic as “The Wet Bandits” and they are perfect targets for Kevin’s traps and praise also needs to be given to Catherine O’Hara, who really sells the plight of a mother losing her son amongst all the madness on-screen.
However, it is funny to note that all of the humours moments fans remember are very brief and take place in the final 20-minutes of the movie. But even so, it had a massive effect on cinema as every kid’s movie in the 90s tried to capture its formula with varying degrees of success (i.e. no one could match up). Even Culkin himself would find himself confined to these roles for quite some time to the point where the poor lad was doing it in his teens.
Although… when you think about the amount of pain this kid inflicts on the Wet Bandits… you have to shudder to think what Kevin McCallister turned into as he grew up…
What did we make of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York? Well, it didn’t make the Top 10. Or the Top 20 for that matter. But it got more votes than any of the other sequels.
You can listen to the Flickering Myth Podcast’s thoughts on the Top 10 Christmas movies using the player below:
Originally published December 24, 2014. Updated July 3, 2023.
