Is Home Alone the Perfect Christmas Movie?

The holiday season brings about a special sort of feeling which is often difficult to put to words; it's a sort of nostalgia, the familiar warmth of being in the company of loved ones with a fire in the fireplace and hot cocoa to keep the cold at bay, or of rushing into the living room at an ungodly hour in the morning while eagerly excited to open the presents waiting so patiently beneath the tree. John Hughes seems to have a perfect understanding of that feeling, and he replicates it perfectly in Home Alone.

The premise of Home Alone is simple, and if placed in the wrong hands it might have been an absolute disaster. When a young boy is accidentally left home alone for the holidays he finds himself forced to protect his home from the pair of robbers attempting to break in, initially pretending the house is filled with people, but eventually getting caught in his lies and finding himself forced to defend his home himself.

While the slapstick brand of comedy has the tendency to fall flat and is hardly ever regarded as something charming or memorable, Home Alone somehow stands tall and proud as something genuine and remarkably different from practically every other family film. Its comedy ranges drastically from the most childish of slapstick to the dark wit exhibiting the callousness of teenagers (particularly that of older brothers).

The music to Home Alone is perhaps its most memorable and endearing quality, it captures a strangely dark emotion of childhood fears while also managing to be warm and inviting with the nostalgia it brings forth. Every track on the film's soundtrack has been composed with a sort of sincerity, deliberate and certain of the emotional message it intends to convey when visuals alone cannot communicate the message at hand.

Home Alone also has something which most family films attempt to present but fail to do properly: heart. Despite the slapstick comedy and childish antics it presents the film simultaneously manages to be heartfelt, but genuinely so. None of the emotions presented feel forced or feigned for the sake of selling more copies of the film, instead they feel deliberate and so heartfelt even adults will find themselves a little teary eyed at Christmas and memories of the childhood wonder they felt during the holiday season.

The beauty of Home Alone is the fact that nothing in this film feels fake or forced, the children behave the way children genuinely act, the parents seem like real concerned parents, and while the intimidating nature of the robbers who invade the home is toned down for the sake of letting children view the movie without feeling too frightened they still manage to come across as menacing and cruel. The odd genuine nature of the film (a rarity among films intended for families) has made it a classic.

However, I would argue that Home Alone is not just a classic, it's also the best Christmas movie made. Home Alone conveys the sense of wonder that accompanies Christmas with such genuine ease that one might feel as though certain events and some of the imagery presented came straight from John Hughes' own memories of the holiday season. While many Christmas movies lumber under the weight of the message of family and good will toward men that they feel forced to convey, Home Alone communicates the feeling of Christmas with remarkable ease and without a single lecture on "the true meaning of Christmas."