Home Alone

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Template:Infobox Film Home Alone is a popular 1990 holiday film starring Macaulay Culkin as Kevin McCallister, an eight year-old who is mistakenly left behind when his family flies to France for a Christmas vacation.

Most of the film was shot in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka, Illinois.

The film made Macaulay Culkin a celebrity. The film also features Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern as the "Wet Bandits," a bumbling pair of burglars named Harry and Marv who try to rob the McCallister home, believing it to be an easy mark with the family absent. The duo, unfortunately for themselves, run into numerous booby traps set by the resourceful Kevin throughout the house. Catherine O'Hara, Roberts Blossom, and John Heard also co-star.

Minor roles are played by Gerry Bamman, Devin Ratray, Kieran Culkin (Macaulay's younger brother), Michael C. Maronna, Hillary Wolf, and Angela Goethals. In addition, frequent Hughes collaborator John Candy has a supporting role as a polka band player.

The promotional poster, now seen as the DVD cover, is a parody of the Edvard Munch painting The Scream.

Taglines:

A Family Comedy Without The Family.
When Kevin's Family Left For Vacation, They Forgot One Minor Detail: Kevin. But Don't Worry... He Cooks. He Cleans. He Kicks Some Butt.

1 Characters
2 Plot
3 Video games
4 Sequels
5 Box office
6 See also
7 External links

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Characters

The main characters include:

Kevin McCallister - (Macaulay Culkin) an eight-year-old kid living in suburban Chicago whose parents accidentally leave him at home when they go on a family vacation to Paris.
Harry Lime - (Joe Pesci) the smarter of the two criminals known as the "Wet Bandits," whose plan it is to loot every house on the McCallister's wealthy suburban neighborhood before the residents come home from their Christmas vacations.
Marv Merchants - (Daniel Stern) the sillier of the two "Wet Bandits."
Marley - (Roberts Blossom) the neighbourhood salt man who is viewed as an alleged shovel slayer.
Kate McCallister - (Catherine O'Hara) Kevin McCallister's mother. Loses her son and gets stuck in a blizzard at the airport in Scranton, Pennsylvania. She desperately tries to get back to him if she has to "sell her soul to the devil himself."

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Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

After an argument with his family the night before, Kevin McCallister is accidentally left behind when his family leaves suburban Chicago to go on a Christmas vacation to France, and experiences what it is like to be independent for the first time. This independence has some good sides (such as being able to sleep in his parents' king-sized bed) and some bad sides (such as having to go into the scary basement alone). He also is wary of his neighbor, Marley, a supposed-murderer who eerily keeps to himself. The two wind up meeting at church on Christmas Eve, and Marley turns out to be a good person, who didn't murder his family, but had a fight with them. Kevin suggests that Marley try to contact them and make up.

The last third of the movie deals with Kevin's discovery of the Wet Bandits' plans to loot his house and how he stops them from achieving this goal by using Rube Goldberg-style traps and humiliations.

Eventually, the Wet Bandits – bloodied, bruised and battered by all of Kevin's traps – are able to get into the house and capture Kevin. Just as they are contemplating how they plan to carry out their revenge on Kevin, Marley arrives to smack each of the burglars on the head with his shovel, knocking them out until the police arrive to take them into custody. Kevin is finally reunited with his family, with her mom succeeding in escaping the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport during a blizzard. In the last scene, Marley, reunited with his family too, waves to Kevin and smiles, then Buzz shouts "Kevin! What did you do to my room?!", reflecting one of the events that happened earlier in the film.

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Video games

Home Alone video games were released for eight video game systems: NES, Sega Genesis, SNES, Sega Game Gear, Game Boy, Sega Master System, Amiga and PC.

The first Home Alone game was released in November 1991.
The Home Alone NES game is a cult classic game beloved in vintage game circles for its odd gameplay, quirky glitches, and near-impossible difficulty.
The Home Alone game on the SNES system was the first to use screen captures and character's voices from the movie in its gameplay.

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Sequels

Sequels are:

However, Culkin, Pesci, Stern, and the McCallister family members only appeared in the original Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.

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Box office

Home Alone earned $533 million at the box office worldwide, with $285 million coming from the United States alone. These box office receipts have made Home Alone the highest grossing live-action comedy of all time, ahead of such films as Bruce Almighty and Meet the Fockers.

During its opening weekend in the United States, the film earned $17 million -- two million dollars more than its $15 million budget.

In Kevin Smith's 1999 film Dogma, Salma Hayek's "Muse" character claims that, while she was responsible for nineteen of the top twenty highest-grossing movies of all time, she had nothing to do with this film's success, alleging that "someone sold their soul to Satan to get the grosses up on that piece of shit." The film's title, however, is never mentioned.

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