6/26/2023 0 Comments Home alone 4 initial releaseHoliday-themed movies always face the risk of veering too far into saccharine sentimentality, but Home Alone cuts the sugar with a truly dark, disturbing undercurrent that becomes more apparent as the viewer leaves childhood further and further behind. It tempers its feel-good message with a dark edge It's a message that resonates with anyone of any age who's ever felt overlooked, ignored, or taken for granted - which is to say, everyone. Thus, Home Alone is basically It’s A Wonderful Life in reverse, with everyone in Kevin’s life realizing Kevin’s worth even though he’s known it all along. He gets to prove not just that he can survive without his family, but that he can do extraordinary things when there's no one around to tell him he can't. Still, there’s something so elementally satisfying about this story: Kevin is picked on, ridiculed, shunted to the side, and, finally, forgotten. The movie falters a bit when it chooses to squeeze in some moralizing, having Kevin’s adventure culminate in him learning to do laundry and shop for a sensible list of groceries. "Kevin's antics will touch the budding subversive in every kid," as the Washington Post promised in its official review. Sledding in the house, eating epically constructed ice cream sundaes for dinner, trespassing in your jerk older brother's room - our pint-size stand-in all of a sudden gets to do whatever he wants with seemingly zero repercussions. Kevin's gleeful statement, "I made my family disappear!" is just the one of the kiddie fantasies Home Alone fulfills. It’s a wish fulfillment fantasy for kids (and their grown-up counterparts) According to the Polish website, Home Alone captured the imaginations of Polish viewers at a time when "all things American were on object of worship," and the movie has since become a winter staple, with one in three Poles between 16 and 49 watching it around Christmastime. Perhaps it's the cabal of very American heavyweights behind the film that makes Home Alone such an enduring hit in Poland, as well. His score netted Home Alone two Oscar nominations, for Best Original Score and Best Original Song. Williams agreed to screen the film - and loved it. So, as Columbus recounted to Entertainment Weekly, he asked Steven Spielberg, whom he'd known "for years," to put him in touch with legendary composer John Williams. The score for the film was equally serendipitous: Columbus had originally hired Bruce Broughton, but Broughton was too busy finishing his work on Rescuers Down Under to do Home Alone. Two weeks later, Hughes sent him the script for Home Alone. I know I need to work, but I can’t do it with this guy." I called John and said, "There’s no way I can do this movie. Then I had another meeting with Chevy, and it was worse. Some of my shots of downtown Chicago are still in the movie. But I stuck it out and even went as far as to shoot second unit. To be completely honest, Chevy treated me like dirt. As he told Chicago Magazine in its fantastic oral history of Home Alone: Hughes first sent Columbus his script for National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, but Columbus found its star Chevy Chase so disagreeable he had to turn down the project. The script was by John Hughes, the grand poobah of iconic '80s movies, and though director Chris Columbus had helmed just two films prior to Home Alone - Adventures in Babysitting, and the flop Heartbreak Hotel - Hughes was a fan of his work. Home Alone's success speaks to the tremendous behind-the-camera talent that elevated the film beyond "just a kids' movie" (to say nothing of its impressive cast). The 10 highest grossing movies of 1990 by domestic box office. Despite being released in November, it was the highest grossing film - by a nearly $70 million margin - in a year that also saw the releases of Ghost and Dances With Wolves (second and third place, respectively), as well as Pretty Woman, Total Recall, and Edward Scissorhands. ![]() 1 box office spot and grossed more than $470 million worldwide. Produced on a budget of $15 million and released on Thanksgiving Day 1990, the movie spent 12 weeks in the No. ![]() ![]() Thanks to Home Alone's modern ubiquity, it's easy to forget that when it was originally released it was a massive, unequivocal hit. The movie was a huge commercial success with some big names behind it Here are four (mostly nonscientific) theories that explain Home Alone's enduring popularity*. Is it thanks to star Macaulay Culkin's impish charm? The eminently quotable lines ("Buzz, your girlfriend - woof!")? The blatant Pepsi product placement? Related Home Alone's 11 jerk kids, ranked
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