Of course we watched this more than 20 years ago, but recently took it out of the library to watch again for a couple of reasons. One, it is ostensibly a holiday movie and we were watching a series of them. Also, a friend had just lost a loved pet and needed a silly movie to take her mind away for a couple of hours. This movie fit the bill. It has several laugh out loud scenes, and mildly amusing material surrounding those scenes. The ensemble cast is fine. Catherine O’Hara is a believable mom and I have liked Daniel Stern ever since he couldn’t understand how a VCR works in City Slickers. If you are one of those gentle souls like our friend who has difficulty distinguishing between cartoonish fictional violence and reality, you will need to look away a few times. It won’t make the regular rotation of our traditional holiday movies, but I am glad we fit it in this year.

"Home Alone" gets an enormous amount of mileage out of such a flimsy central idea which simply follows the familiar pattern of behaviour you would expect if an eight year old child was accidently left home alone. He eats junk food and he watches equally junk television programs all day. However, this obviously isn't enough to pad out the already thin story, so screenwriter John Hughes introduces a couple of burglars into the mix to spice the proceedings up a little by having them target the empty houses and robbing them. Of course, they target Kevin's (Macaulay Culkin) house, but the lad is considerably more resourceful than either one of them could have ever anticipated and what now follows is a brilliant sequence of outrageous slapstick set pieces that are great fun and tremendously enjoyable making this the perfect Yule Tide treat which ironically enough can be watched regardless of what time of the year it happens to be.