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At the height of Macaulay Culkin’s fame came a sound lesson about the importance of family, as an en masse family Christmas holiday to Paris takes a turn for the worst when the parents realise they have been a tad careless in their headcount, and have inadvertently left their eight year old son at home all by himself. Children of my generation will have fond memories of splitting our sides with laughter as cute little Culkin puts the Wet Bandits (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern) through hell in their quest to burgle from his home, an apparently quite lucrative target. This was, of course, the important part, with the lesson in the importance of family being a conveniently wholesome housing for a riotous rollercoaster ride of sight gags and amusing injuries. But never mind that… the film was a huge hit, and went down in history as an instant classic, and the defining point of Culkin’s career, then considered to be America’s greatest child star since Shirley Temple, before he went on to do forgettable flops like “Richie Rich” and “Getting Even With Dad”, as his career declined.
Really, 80’s/90’s kids…would Christmas have been the same for us without Joe Pesci getting his head blowtorched? Or Daniel Stern’s (almost literally) blood curling scream at his predicament as he finds himself with a large, hairy tarantula on his face? Violent fictitious films called “Angels With Filthy Souls” used as a prank against hapless pizza delivery boys? Paint cans in the face? Nails in the feet? Micro Machine pratfalls? Red hot doorknobs? Oh, what a wonderfully violent time it was for our sensitive, innocent little minds back then! I can remember my own mother watching in utter horror as I, at the tender age of seven, practically wet myself laughing at all the mindless violence my then new favourite movie offered up for my delectation. She took me aside and carefully explained to me that people can get badly hurt or even killed if you drop irons on their heads, or shoot them in the face with a bee-bee gun, or perform any of the other acts of cruelty the angelic Kevin McAllister enacted upon the would-be intruders. I never did any of it of course, although I do believe that I, and some of my other childhood friends, may still be suffering from slight residual brain damage resulting from emptying bags of marbles on each others heads from the top bunk in my bedroom, but that’s another story.
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But while we were all admittedly in it for that fifteen minutes or so of violence as the Wet Bandits fell victim to Kevin’s booby-traps in the latter half of the film, (after which I always felt the movie was effectively finished, and the remainder was merely tying up loose ends for grown-up viewers), we also cannot deny the wonderfully warm, fuzzy feeling we all experienced during the final scenes, as Catherine O’Hara arrives home on a delightfully snowy Christmas morning to find her son safe and sound waiting for her, followed shortly by the rest of the family, and to John Williams’ merry score we leave the family laughing, and hugging, all together as the snow continues to fall outside. While my fellow antipodeans may have somewhat different memories of Christmas involving barbeques, swimming pools, and on some years catastrophic bush fires… one cannot deny we all felt the spirit as that joyous scene unfolded before our eyes. This scene embodied the true spirit of Christmas, ie: loving and sharing. Cue warm fuzzy feeling….NOW!
