Home Alone

Home Alone

Dan:

Okay, so straight off the back of our Christmas cracker, mid weeker. We'll still we've got another, and it is a traditional Christmas movie.

Sidey: but if you cast your mind back just a couple of weeks, we did bone alone.

Dan: Yeah.

Sidey: We're gone. And this feels like, you know, just custom designed just to troll me, but we're going for home alone this

Pete: This is, this wasn't especially designed to troll you. But I feel like this film, because of like from some of the, even from some of the early episodes of this podcast, it's kind of woven into the fabric of it. It's probably, it's probably featured most prominently in our top fives, literally just to troll you.

Sidey: Mm-hmm. .

Pete: But it is after all the Christmas period. And this is a Christmas film,

Sidey: mm-hmm.

Pete: From 1990, and it is home alone. And the reason that we are reviewing it is because I watched it for the first time in, in a long time, I will say with my seven year old who wanted to watch a film and we've, you know, he just keeps wanting to watch the same, like cartoony ones that he's, he's seen.

And this is a live action film, obviously, which isn't really, isn't really anything that he's kind of like sat and engaged with a great deal. So I thought it's Christmas As a young, I think I mean, Mo pretty much everybody listening will know,

Sidey: I hate this,

Pete: who this, like who's in the

Dan: I think he's finding a new audience still because it's,

Pete: because he's, I think in the film he's gonna be like Kevin McAllister.

Dan: he's he's not much older than that.

Pete: right. So, and JJ seven. So I was thinking he might, you know,

Dan: miles away, he might

Pete: think, well, you know, this kid represents me a little bit. So this is 1990s, home alone.

Dan: It opens on the McAllister house and it's Christmas. You can see the lights outside.

There's snow. It looks beauty. They've got like a eight bedroom house or something by the looks of it. Yeah. And they've got about eight families going on in there as well. Cuz it's Christmas. Everybody's running around. We've got a policeman at the bottom of the stairs. Who's just trying to get the attention of whoever owns the house and the policeman's, Joe Peche.

And he stood at the bottom of the stairs in police uniform and everybody's going by him and he says, do you live here? Or as you got your parents here? And they go, yes, but they're not the ones that own this house. So he has to keep on doing it after.

I'd know half an hour and the pizza delivery guy coming then he eventually speaks to the father of the house and says, who?

Says, yeah, well we've got Lee's Locks and we've got these security and everything. And then he speaks to the mother and she says, oh, we're going away to France. And he, he

Pete: So for context, Joe Peshy, this, you know, charming policeman is just a friendly chap going around the neighborhood, just making sure that everybody.

Maybe not,

Sidey: something tells me,

Pete: But

anyway, he's just checking that everyone's okay and that, you know, that is what, what's going on. You're going away. Be careful cuz you know, we've heard about some ronans in the neighborhood who might, you know, look to be pilfering some of your belongings. What this scene is also doing is trying to paint a picture of like this absolute chaos going on in this household because they're going on vacation the following day.

And there's so much to do, loads of kids running around. It's, it's fucking like hell on earth. So you wouldn't want to be part of this scene. But because it, it's kind of alluding to the fact that this is pretty chaotic and, you know, something might get forgotten or whatever. And yeah, we see if that, well, it does, if that plays out.

Dan: and, and Kevin we see him, he's, he feels like he's not being treat. Fairly in the house. He, he, he uses fairly fruity language to, to talk about how he's treated like scum and that

Pete: he, well, there there's, there's, there's two things going on here. He, he seems to be like a, but of the few of the, so there's some older, there's some older kids.

Sidey: Yeah.

Pete: Um,

Dan: Kids.

Pete: there's lots of kids, not all of them you know, direct sort of, you know, siblings, but there are cousins and all of this kind of caper going on. so there's this buzz character.

Sidey: This, is where I'm out

Pete: right? So time, so Buzz, I mean, he, he is a notorious like child.

In cinematic history. I think if you, if you talk about Buzz, obviously there's buzz light here, but you know, if you, you don't have to go too far before somebody goes, oh, buzz from from home alone. What a, what a bell end. And I mean, he ranks right up there with other characters and, and people in you know, in o in other films, you know,

Dan: he's, he's a little bit like the, the kid off choice story who rips the head off dolls

Pete: things. He kind of is, but when you, when you.

Like all he is, but he's, he's less like, he's not physically.

Sidey: He's ginger. Isn't he

Pete: bully, huh?

he? He

is Ginger. He's really ugly. He looks like a pig. And he's got like,

Dan: looks like he might grow up to be out of the Biff, out of yeah.

Pete: yeah. You're getting Biff vibes out there.

He's just like a nasty bully piece of shit. So he's given Kevin McAllister play by Macaulay Calkin a hard time and all the other kids, he, he, it just

Dan: he eats his pizza.

Pete: Yeah, he

Dan: eats his pizza and he said, if you want, if you want some work, get a plate. I'll buff some up for you. And he, he pretends to be sick. And then

Pete: so Kevin reacts to that and starts throwing out insults and causing a bit of a scene. And then I think he knock, like loads of stuff gets

Dan: when this big scene happens in the kitchen and, and I think milk gets spill over the passport.

And somebody gets crushed as a chair sort of gets pushed back and lots of other things. Someone else spoke and everybody looks around at Kevin and they go, Ah, you are a little germ. You are a disease. Why don't you just go upstairs? You are a jerk from the an from the uncle and yeah, and they're all like this.

So he is just thinking, oh God, everybody hates me. His mum marches him upstairs right to the top. He's gotta share bed with the kid that pisses himself all the time. And he says, look, I don't wanna do that. He says, okay, I'll find him somewhere else, but I don't wanna see you again all night. And he says, I wish I didn't have family.

And she. Well, look, you wouldn't want to, you know, if we woke up, if you woke up tomorrow and we were all gone and you weren't here, you'd miss us. And she said, he goes, no. And he said, we'll, say it again then maybe it will happen. And he says it again, Pete.

Sidey: It's like candy man.

Pete: well, in, in, in amongst all, all of the chaos with the, with the pizza and everything getting knocked over, a lot of stuff gets thrown in

the bin.

Dan: Including his passport.

Including

Pete: his passport and plane ticket by the looks of things.

again, this is,

Dan: so then in the morning there's a, there's been an electrical outage in the night, which meant all the alarm clocks that were gonna wake 'em up in the morning, they need to be out by eight, didn't go off.

And so it's panic in the morning and they're going, look, we've gotta get there. We've got 45 minutes to get to the airport. Everybody's gotta get ready out, up, done. And they do it, and it's such a account. It's such a mad kind of, They're in the count. There's a kid who wanders over from the other street or

Pete: a little weird kid from the, from in the neighborhood

Dan: who's just like, oh, what's the mileage on that van?

Oh, how far does it go? What colors it coming? He's asking all

Pete: yeah, I mean, he's not Australian Dan, but he dunno why he did that in an Australian accent. But yeah, he's really irritating and asks loads and loads of questions. So yeah, of course. So it's one of the elders. It's one of the elder siblings, like a sister or something who accidentally counts.

Dan: Exactly. It's Heather. It's Heather. She makes the mistake. Bloody heather.

Pete: So they all get in these vans, these like transport vehicles and off to the airport they go

Dan: and they rush through. They've just made the plane. They all get up. Parents are flying.

First club class kids are in coach economy.

Pete: like a good idea

Dan: though. And and yeah. Happy day. She has a feeling she's forgotten something, but she's not kind of sure what. Yeah. And Kevin meanwhile wakes up in the house and

Sidey: he's, home empty

Dan: Well, he goes, I made my p my family disappear.

And he then thinks about all the nasty things and it's kind of just pops up in little heads next to him. Get upstairs, Kevin. Oh, your disease, your jerk, and all the.

And then he says it again, but this time with a smile on his face and he goes, I made my family disappear. And he celebrates by bouncing on the bed, eating popcorn at the same

Pete: doing whatever, any eight year old boy who wanted their family to disappear would do in

Dan: celebration

and, and so, Great. We've also had a little clue of the next door neighbor at one point has been show sewn shoveling snow. And Biff tells him that he's a, a wanted mer serial killer who's never been

Pete: Yeah. He killed his own family. That's

And he's like, he's one of those. Guys that, like, he looks sort of like ha a bit haggard and, and a bit scary and yeah.

And like to, to an eight year old boy, if you've been told this guy's horrible and kills people and he, you know, and he looks a bit scary and he's not really like, got a load of people skills this fella has. He?

Dan: No, you might, you might go, you might sort of believe that. Anyway, Kevin turns on the TV and he's having time of his life watching old black and white movies and.

And eating all the kind of stuff that he never was allowed to eat. And he's king of his own castle.

Pete: Yeah. He at one point he, he, he spruces himself up and makes the grave error of putting aftershave on his face.

Dan: Yeah, that's

Pete: right. Um, Which burns his skin, which that wouldn't

Dan: And he just so young, isn't he?

I mean, like, he, I dunno how old he was actually in this movie, but I watched it today I dunno. He looks, you know, when he looks younger than your kids now, you

Sidey: he looks very, very young and slight and

Pete: All the while there's been a couple of shifty characters kind of staking out the

Dan: neighborhood.

Pete: And these guys known collectively as the wet bandits are some recently escaped from prison.

Or is that in the second one? I can't remember now. But anyway, they are

Dan: they, well, they, yeah, they're, they're a bad duo and one of them is actually the policeman. And you can tell cuz he's got the gold

Pete: same gold tooth, Yeah. same And it's also the same guy as well, so you can

Dan: and it's the same guy, but it was the tooth because that glittered a little

Pete: earlier. Yeah. But as Kevin's coming back from like a, a little outing he nearly gets run over by, by the wet bandit sees the, the, the. Glint of the gold tooth realizes that this is the fella from yesterday and they're now up to no good. So to convince them and other people, I guess,

Sidey: that

Pete: there's that he is not home alone.

He sets up a rather elaborate kind of dinner party type scene. with some mannequins that there's absolutely no like, backstory as to why they're there in the house, all dressed up with music. It's quite sort of innovative though. What he does, he puts 'em on like turntables and he's got a series of pull pulleys and string and stuff and to, you know, to the unsuspecting

Dan: a nice light shadow play going through the curtains and everybody's having fun and they think, oh, maybe they, they ended up not going away. Yeah. Sad.

Sidey: his mother, his mother does twig, doesn't she? A mid-flight that they, they'd done fucked up.

Dan: Yeah.

Pete: She just screams Kevin. Yeah. And

Sidey: she imagine having a child and calling it Kevin.

Pete: Yeah, that's true. Well, yeah, that's my, my father-in-law's name is Kevin, but he was, he didn't get given that by his parents.

He was given that by his friends when he was about 40

Dan: Oh, your friends

Pete: because he's Chinese. So, and he just said, I'd, I'd like an English name. And his friends on the golf course heroin said, we're gonna call you Kevin. And that's how he got the name Kevin. But there are other Kevins out there.

Yeah, so then there's this scene when they arrive in, in Paris and she's like beside ourselves with worry beside herself with worry.

The, the old man doesn't seem quite so bothered. He's like, well, listen, you sought that out, and we'll go and fucking like, go and have a spar at the hotel . And

Sidey: yeah, all the flights, all the flights are booked for a couple of days and the phone lines are

Dan: out.

We know the phone lines are out because that's already been nicely set up is the last thing that this guy just randomly came over to somebody getting into a taxi to tell them your telephone isn't gonna work for a couple of days.

Sidey: hell of

Dan: Yeah. Hell of us help. So, there's no, there's no calling Kevin to see if he's fine. And they don't have anybody that lives remotely close to them that they might because they're all with them.

Sidey: Yeah. Yeah. That's it. She,

Pete: she does through sort of pleading and hysteria and everything manages to, to organize a flight back to Pennsylvania. And the family house that we haven't said like in, in is in suburban.

Dan: Yeah.

Pete: I have no idea sitting, I have no idea the distance between Pennsylvania

Sidey: and distance brings its own reward. Pete

Pete: it, it often does. But any, any clues we're not entirely sure. Well, we know that. It's, we know that there, yeah. It must be in the same vicinity and only an an overnight.

Sidey: cold there at the moment though.

Dan: Yeah, that's very true. That's true.

Sidey: Very true.

Well, Kevin, Kevin goes out to the shop, doesn't he?

Pete: He does.

Sidey: Buys a shit load of groceries with not much money. And does he clock the burglars? Does he, because

Pete: That's all that's, yeah, that's the bit that I was talking about.

Sidey: Oh, does he, is the stuff that he buys in the shop, the stuff that he uses to rig all the booby traps with

Pete: bit of that as well. Yeah. Yeah. Cause he's done, he makes a couple of journeys out.

Sidey: Let's definitely not go through every single fucking booby trap.

Pete: We're not, we're not going to, I

Sidey: good fuck for.

Pete: the thing is I, I don't wanna spoil this for anyone who hasn't heard it , but if someone said to me, home alone. Then obviously you need the setup. Yeah. But then in my head, the entire film is just like booby traps and this like, boy being tormented and you know, there's

Sidey: he's the tormentor, really

Pete: Exactly. But we are a long, long way into the film before the wet bandits finally make their attempt to, to get into the into the household.

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: Do you know that that house is up for sale at the moment?

Sidey: Yeah, the Goonies one's up for sale as well, I think. it? Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. Okay. I would, the Goonies one would be really cool actually. Sorry, this the McAllister house, but they sold with Noel's house one the, the one in Penrith. Right. Which would've been a nice one to have as well.

But yeah, that's for sale. If you've got a few, few hundred Dow or Mill or whatever,

Sidey: Well, it things progress as the, the, the wet bandits make their way in. Well try and make their way in. There's a few things that happen, like on the porch. We, we spoke about all this in Bon alone, didn't we?

Pete: Well, what, what we haven't, what we haven't mentioned is, is one of the things that, that Kevin does early on is stick on a film a film called Angels With Dirty Faces.

Sidey: Yeah. It's a bastardized version.

No, it's,

that's what,

it

Pete: oh, that's the actual, sorry, that's the actual film.

Sidey: Angels With Filthy Souls is the one from the film,

Pete: Souls. So it's like a rip off of Angels with Dirty Faces and in it, and thi this was the only bit that I sort of like watched. So there's like this black and white spoof of, of that, of that film and it's like, a guy who some money and blah, blah, blah, and you get this dialogue, the.

It involves like, there's no like swearing, but he's, he's a pretty mean mean old guy. This, this fella. And he's saying, I'm not gonna pay you your money and I'm gonna pump you full of lead words to that effect. And then like, guns this guy down. Like you don't see

Sidey: galling gun style.

Pete: yeah, you don't see actual like, like blood and bullet holes per se.

But you see someone get like mercilessly gunned down, which I was sat there thinking like, my lad's watching this and he's seven. That's quite sort of full. in terms of

Dan: an old black and white gangster movie, isn't it?

Pete: Oh, I know, but he's never seen those either. So the, that, that would've been his I'm

Sidey: first person seen gun down

Dan: Ugly yellow no good. Ketra up my property.

Pete: have you had a stroke

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: that's kind of what they

Sidey: sound like.

Pete: Yeah. So what he d then does is, is use that as I, you know, initially scare off one of the me, one of the wet bandits, Marv or the other, Harry, which one? Curly Hair is

Sidey: Yep. One of 'em yes. Daniel Stern and Joe Peci is Harry Lime.

From the third man

Pete: know. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, he, he scares him off by making him think that there's like some kind of lunatic in there already with a, with a gun. But they, they work out.

Dan: And it, it is basically Kevin defending his home for the next hour or so with various Lars.

There's swinging cans of paint. There's broken glass, the

Sidey: the iron.

Pete: There's the iron, there's

Dan: It's an eight year old boy who's one step ahead of these two idiots hat plus kind of idiots that are robbing the place. And all the time Mother is is charging back. Of course, she's not gonna make it until he's wrapped things up in a neat little bow.

Pete: Well, she's, she by this time has, has met she's like pleading at, at the Pennsylvania airport desk. And John Candy over hiss this, and I had completely forgotten that John Candy was even in this film, but I should have known it is an American film in the nineties. And he was in all of.

But he's only got a small, but he's like a part of a polka band, a a traveling polka band.

And she's there sort of like lamenting how shit a mother she is. And, and he then just starts going, oh no, it's fine. Like these guys, this, this guy hasn't seen his kids for like five years and this one's like a piece of shit and it's so don't worry about it.

Sidey: all of his dialogue was improvised. Was it? Yeah.

that he did his whole thing in, in 1 23 hour shift of work.

It was done as a favor to the director, Chris Columbus and John Hughes, the writer. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Pete: Okay. So he, he sort of, you know, brings another like bit of humor to the, to proceedings. I mean, before Kevin's even been set upon by the by the wet bandits, he, he's.

Popped to church and he's had like a bit of a confl with, with your man from next door and found out that he's not a Ronan that he's just a lonely old guy.

Dan: Well, that's it. I

Sidey: It's like the old boo boo raley kind of thing, isn't it?

Dan: Yeah, he, he, he kind of helps him out and he's Marley, his name is, and he knocks him out with a snow shovel, takes Kevin home and the two burglars are arrested and then the next morning, Kevin wakes up and he's disappointed. The family still aren't you know?

And then he hears one of them enter the house and he goes downstairs and they immediately have a hug and everything, and it's, it's a lovely warm Christmas. People they didn't want to, to speak to anymore or suddenly hugging and, and kissing. And Yeah, he, he keeps, he doesn't say anything about Harry and Marv.

And there's some missing gold, I think, and they're wondering why there's a few clues,

Sidey: Was the tooth, the tooth is, is found, isn't it?

Dan: it? Even Buzz and Kevin have kind of a

Sidey: moment, fuck buzz.

Dan: They kind of make up. And Marley sees everyone greeting him and it's, it's a nice

Sidey: he has some sort of weird reconciliation with his family,

Pete: Well, they, when they're talking in the church, he's like, they're talking about family and he's saying, oh, why haven't you got family? Like, I heard that you killed them all. And he was like, oh, no. Like, I had an argument with my son and I said I didn't want anything to do with him anymore.

And then there was this like one Christmas that I, I tried reaching out to him and he didn't really seem too receptive to it. I've just left it at that. And then Kevin encourages him to, to make amends with his, with his family.

Dan: spirit.

Pete: And and that's exactly what the, the guy says back to him. He's like, well, listen, like your family, you know, they do care about you and you know, you, you do miss them, so you need to be nicer to them and them, you, et cetera.

So

Dan: did, did you enjoy this again then Pete watching it?

Pete: I. I think it's, I watched it as a kid, well, when I'd have been, what, 12? When this came out. So I watched it when I was younger and thought at the time it was like entertaining and, and basically you're watching it for the, for the booby traps and the, and the guys

Dan: getting the no nostalgia as much as

Pete: yeah.

Watching again after such a long time, I was gobsmacked at how long it took to actually get to the. because I didn't realize the setup. I guess in that maybe the second one it gets into the action a little bit quicker because you kind of, you need less of a setup, albeit still a setup. But no, I thought it was like, it's one of those things that I think it's mostly awful, but it still did entertain me to a point.

My son watched it start to finish with absolutely no kind of like emotional reaction or whatever. And maybe the odd, kind of like chuckle when some of the. , the silly stuff happened to the, to the wet bandits. But he, he watched the whole thing and that's the first time he's watched a, a, a full film start to finish.

That's live action, like not a cartoony one I did say, there's another one, would you wanna watch it? And he was like, yeah, but it seemed pretty ambivalent about it.

Sidey: there's a third one, but it's not McCauley co.

Pete: No, except I think there might even be four and five. There's others, but there is a reunion, e type one isn.

Sidey: God, so

Pete: coming out. It's either out or it's coming out with like McCauley. Really? Yeah.

Dan: Well, this, I was gonna watch a Christmas story. They've a new one of of those as well, which he didn't like. I mean, These movies.

Okay. I, I enjoyed it again, I must say, I didn't think I would enjoy it.

Sidey: Well, the Misses watches this every year, so Harry and my daughter, they watched it this year. I was out. Thank God. I just don't like it. I just don't fucking like it. There's not a, it's your

Pete: platform to, to just, you

Sidey: we're going to Pete, we'll tell you why.

I just don't like it. There's not a single character. Who is likable for me, like even my colleague Coconut, I just find like, I don't like child actors, so I'm on the back foot anyway, but I just find his character fucking

Pete: John Candy,

Sidey: I've always been on the fence of John Candy, don't really like him either.

Pete: You were, cuz

Sidey: was, yeah, I know it's controversial cause everyone seems to love him. I just think his film's all the same. He's just like a fat guy who's like, sort of funny maybe, but not really. Yeah. Joe PA's fucking better than this. Like it's just fucking trash. I obviously, like I am, I know I'm in the minority.

The budget for it was 18 mil. It took 477. It was in the Guinness Booker records as the highest box office gross for comedy. I dunno if that still stands or not, but obviously hugely popular. It's just not, it's just not for me. Let's just, I'll just, just,

Dan: it's not for Saudi, but it is for pretty much

Sidey: everyone.

Yeah, everyone else loves it

Dan: with kids as well. It's a fairly safe one for, you know, eight, nine

Sidey: you can go into the second one and double down on hateable people cuz Donald Trump's in that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dan: we won't,

Pete: think I prefer the, say I I'm gonna watch the second one again.

Again. I haven't seen it for years, but I'm gonna watch that cuz you've got like

Sidey: McCauley Calkins stunt double was a 30 year old man. Very, very short 30 year old man. So it must be like rigs height

Pete: because I was gonna say, there is the laughable bit where he kind of, what's it called? Like zip lines from the, from the house down to like, to the tree house.

And it's blatantly like a bloke in a blonde wig, which is hilarious.

But

why wouldn't they just use a, a, like a stunt child? They, they exist.

Dan: Or, or, or why wouldn't they just completely own that and put somebody who looked nothing like him other than the blonde wig?

Sidey: The people, the people of Poland, they really like this because it's considered a traditional Christmas movie.

It's ed on national tele television during primetime Christmas every year. In, in 2010, the movie was scheduled not to wear, but was broadcast. Over 90,000 people protested. Wow. 2011, the movie aired on seventh 23rd with an audience of over 5 million making it the most popular show aired during the Christmas season in Poland.

it's

do not holiday in Poland at that time of year. This will give my advice

Pete: I think it's because it was one of the first film show cuz it was communist rule there and when it, when all of a sudden Western films started arriving in Poland. This, this was one of the

Sidey: bring back communism man.

Pete: first one. Yeah, that seems like a good idea.

Dan: just think what other films they could have opened with,

Pete: Well, the Diehard

Dan: Lawrence of Arabia or

Pete: was was one of the first as well. That's

Sidey: huge. See what this Christmas, we've what we've done diehard. Yeah. They've done home Alone. We've started, we started watching Glass Onion, not obviously not a Christmas movie.

Ats all but really good. I watched Banies of Vina Sharon, did anyone else catch anything?

Dan: I want to

Sidey: that. It's fucking, it's tremendous. It's really, really good. You'd love it. You really love that.

Dan: that. I, I did watch started to watch Reacher,

Sidey: Okay. Well, the series or the, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Dan: and that started Okay. He's like a, a massive Sherlock, isn't he?

Sidey: Yeah, he's

Dan: and there was another film that I watched that I won't ever watch again that I can't remember, but I watched two hours of it.

Sidey: Nice.

Pete: For me, Christmas films are Star Wars, original Star Wars trilogy, like Razor the Last Ark,

Sidey: these guys. Oh, we watched Ray, the Lost Ark.

Yeah, that's what we did. That's a classic.

Pete: not Christmas film, but ac You

Sidey: watched to watch. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Pete: More home Alone. Don't think I'll go there again.

But Home Loan two, I'm gonna queue it up in my households at some point very soon.

Dan: Well, we better start thinking about films for, for New Years.

Sidey: I think our next load of stuff will be leaning heavily on Henry Cav all's output. so stay tuned for that.

Dan: a great way to start the year.

Sidey: Bye.