Home Alone **** 1/2

James: (age six) *****It was good. It wasn't really funny. It was so not scary. Five stars.

Jupiter: (age four) ***** (Google stars) It was funny when the robbers were getting hurt!

Justice (age two) ***** (How did you like the movie, Justice?) It's a secret. Google stars.

Grandma Pat: **** Amazing it held the interest of all three little ones--very late at night! The story is still cute after 18+ years.

Mama: **** James was very upset last week when our movie was not Home Alone. Adam had narrated the premise to him, and he was very interested in seeing it. Then this afternoon, knowing Home Alone was scheduled for movie night, he brought up the subject of robbers. He had a lot of questions about them starting with, "Are robbers reality or fantasy?" (they've been discussing the difference between reality and fantasy in school) then inquiring if robbers ever robbed (kidnapped) children. Despite the usual reassurances--that his Popi is the strongest man in the gym and his mama knows jiu-jitsu--he left the table and started googling "robbers." Then, before dinner he announced, instead of watching the movie he wanted to do an art project instead. I finally realized he might have had some anxiety about this movie!
When movie time finally came at 8 o'clock at night, he settled in on Grandma Pat's lap and was mellow throughout the movie, probably because we started so late, and he was very tired. I watched him a lot to try and gauge his reactions, and he smiled here and there. The truth is, despite the whole, admittedly scary premise of abandonment and violation, it wasn't a scary movie at all. It was sweet, sentimental, and at the end, completely funny.
And it was Jupiter who took us by surprise.
When the robbers finally break into Kevin's house and start encountering his carefully choreographed traps, with madcap results, Jupiter started laughing. And laughing and laughing. It was infectious (anyway I admit to a soft spot for slapstick) so soon Adam and I were laughing as well. Jupiter was in hysterics, peels of laughter coming out of her. She got every gag--just seeing the set-up--frozen steps--she'd start laughing. When Joe Pesci started slipping on the ice, Jupiter let out peels of giggles. When he kept slipping--and kept slipping--she was in full blown hysterics. What a delight it was to watch with her.
Justice had a period of time midway through the movie, when she was more interested in throwing Milly the spaniel her ball, but during the final movement of bb guns, blow torches, hot irons and tarantulas (with Jupiter in hysterics on the sofa) Justice stood at attention in front of the TV, very very interested--if not completely clued in.
I have to say, this movie gets four stars for the tightness of its plot, the genuine adorableness of McCauley Caulkin, for making me weepy at the end, and mostly for making making mother and four-year-old daughter both laugh their butts off.

Adam: **** I remember as a kid seeing a Laurel and Hardy movie where they have to get a ladder through a building. It was the funniest thing I'd ever seen. I don't know if they were going to fix a clock, or what, but the ladder was so long you couldn't tell what was happening on either end. I this movie, I really liked the part where the mother and father were in first class and all of their kids were back in coach. Of course Kevin wasn't safe, but they didn't know that at the time. It was sweet to see John Candy as the Polka king of the west. He wasn't terribly funny in this movie, but I grew up with him as a kid on SCTV. John Kasimir and I used to watch him, with Rick Moranis and that whole SCTV crew--Henry Levi. There was something really kind of innocent about this movie, Home Alone. For some reason we don't even resent their affluence. I feel that if you made a movie like this today and someone lived in a 24 room house and had unquestioned affluence that it would garner resentment. Just looking at their lights being on while they were out of town--they just had so much physically and materially. I bet if we'd have seen the burglers humble apartments in scummy Chicago we might have felt a lot for them, for having so little in a town where some people have so much. It wouldn't have been slapstick anymore. But they were the Wet Burglers, who fucked up people's houses. They were despicable, so it was funny. I'd give it four stars.