Why I hate Home Alone

Home Alone. There is a chance that you are condemned to parts one through five during Christmas. I deliberately say condemned because I find watching Home Alone a punishment. It fits perfectly in the list: doing the dishes, ironing, and folding the sixty-degree wash. If you want to attack me right now with your limited edition box of the chewed-up Christmas movie, just click through to this article about what you didn't know but want to know about the classic, because there is no chance that you will appreciate this epistle.

So, Home Alone. Once I found it bearable. I suspect I was in the age category of the main character back then and found it particularly interesting on an amorous level. I was in love with every handsome peer who showed up with the right hairstyle. But where he used to be endearing, Macaulay Culkin is now nothing in that direction and suddenly also 37 years old. Meine lieben, when did this happen? Probably during the time he directed himself from rehab to dealer and back again, I guess.

That’s why it’s finally time to be ice-cold and honest about this Christmas classic. No frills, no velvet gloves, and I’ll leave the nuance aside.

Let’s start positively. If you ask me what I possibly, maybe, might find humorous in this film, it’s the creative cutting, pasting, and dubbing of the line: ‘Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal’. I can laugh at it, maybe even out loud. It could also be that I’m in a milder mood during this part of the film because I know a gigantic steaming pizza is coming out of that box. You can choose which theory you find most plausible.

The rest of Home Alone I find a cringeworthy string of the Even-Apeldoorn-Bellen commercials. You know it’s going wrong, but no one is clever enough to intervene. Let me watch a random Home Alone and I’ll be shouting all evening: noooooo or that-can’t-be. The worst part is that I’ve seen them so often that I know exactly what’s coming. It doesn’t make it any easier, I can tell you.

How in the world is it possible that there is no one, but really no-one around to pick up that kid? Except for the creepy neighbor who gives you the creeps, but who turns out to be nice after all. They’ve woven a nice social theme into that, that’s true. Although a child molester would also be quite misplaced here, I think, you’d get a completely different movie. And mom is also abroad, what a situation that would be.

And now that we’re talking about the mother, I can immediately continue with the father. What is he actually doing to get his youngest back? The only one I see moving mountains is mom. She even gets on a bus with an indeterminate band to slide home. Dad, no points.

If you think the episodes with Macaulay Culkin are a crime against television, think again. Even though the new kid moves up a notch on the scale of outward cuteness, the script only gets worse. I sometimes wonder if a script was ever written for the sequel.

I thought all those endless episodes that I was alone. Year in and year out I had a lonely Christmas in this regard. It must have been me, I was a humorless portrait. I watched the comedy classic of all time disappear from the screen with love. Until someone yesterday in the editorial office confessed to finding Home Alone such a gigantic (beep) movie. And I heard May, and I heard Elke, and I heard and I heard and I heard. It sounded like music to my ears. Finally recognition, finally like-minded people. Home Alone is really not fun.

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