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Kevin's Suburban Panopticon?: Home Alone and the Christmas Spirit

by LuElla D’Amico December 05, 2023

F or adult audiences revisiting the now classic 1990 film Home Alone , Kevin McCallister has become synonymous with a privileged rich kid who does not care about anyone but himself. Mincing no words, one Vice article puts it this way: “Kevin is, at his heart, a spoiled, entitled, rich suburban brat who is willing to sacrifice his family’s home, and even commit murder, to avoid bringing his staycations or vacations to an end.” This argument feels ungenerous, as if it sidesteps purposefully the gentler, human elements of the film and its deeper spiritual messages as well.

After all, when I watched the first Home Alone movie as a child with my mom, I remember feeling drawn in by the moments of tenderness that Kevin shares with his mother more than any other part. I assumed that Kevin seemed callous at points because he was lonely and mistreated. My family was not one that could ever dream of a Disney vacation, much less a family trip to Paris. Yet, I never felt jealous of Kevin’s large, glitzy house or fancy holidays abroad. Instead, I commiserated with his loneliness. Even as a part of a bustling family, Kevin McCallister is forgotten in more ways than simply being left physically home alone.

Similar to the McCallister family (words I never thought I’d write), my family growing up, and my family today for that matter, is not immune from speaking unkind words toward each other. In one of the most memorable parts of the film—the one when the eight-year-old boy wakes up in the house alone and discovers his family has accidentally left him out of their vacation—Kevin expresses momentarily gleefulness. He recalls in his head a litany of abusive phrases his family has hurled at him, including one from his Uncle Frank dubbing him a “little jerk.” Similarly, he remembers his older sister Megan referring to him as “completely helpless!” His brother Buzz menacingly pops in his head as well, threatening him. “I’m going to feed you to my tarantula,” Buzz jeers.

Even Kevin’s mom, Kate, is not depicted as an idyllic Marian figure. Kevin replays words she said to him in anger: “There are fifteen people in this house,” she remarks accusingly, “and you’re the only one who has to make trouble!” Once he wakes up alone without anyone else in the house, Kevin’s troubles seem to be alleviated, at least momentarily. Viewers might remember at this point in the film that the music becomes merry. Kevin brushes his teeth and belts out a jazzy rendition of “White Christmas” by the Drifters, using a comb as a microphone. The voice he sings over is much deeper than that of an eight-year-old, and we see Kevin acting as an adult for the first time in the film. For Kevin, adulthood translates into being in control of not only the house but also his emotions.

When I rewatched this film this year and last with my children—they are ages eight and nine—they laughed at Kevin’s antics and “pranks” as they called them, yet they also wondered a little at whether he was acting admirably. “Would I get in trouble if I did this?” my daughter asked me this year, as she saw Kevin booby-trapping his door. She instinctively felt that what he was doing was wrong on some level. Yet Kevin, in a child’s way, was confronting a very real evil that threatened his safety. The answer about his morality is not an obvious, or easy one. Like I had as a child, both of my children noticed how unkind Kevin’s family was to him, and it seemed to make sense to them that he would, in some ways, transfer his unhappiness about his family life to his treatment of the criminals in the film, directing his internal rage to these external bad guys. In a psychological vein, Kevin’s prankish behavior can be interpreted as a defense mechanism, a cry for attention to regain control in a life that seemingly feels chaotic and hurtful.

Lest you think I am being too generous or reading too much into Kevin’s psychological state, I bring your attention to the moments in the film that I was drawn to as an adult this time, moments that I glossed over as a child, drawn in during the past as my children were recently by the criminals’ tripping over ice sheets and the singeing of receding hairlines. As a mother revisiting this film, I observed the moments and places where Kevin discovered comfort within his family. As a Catholic convert revisiting it, I discerned the instances and locations where Kevin sought solace beyond his family, specifically finding spiritual reassurance at his local parish.

While a psychological reading of Kevin’s behavior might suggest the child is reacting to verbal abuse by doing anything to get attention and regain control of his life, a Catholic reading might suggest that Kevin is experiencing spiritual desolation. Desolation, in the context of St. Ignatius of Loyola’s teachings, is characterized by a sense of spiritual alienation and a feeling of being distant from God’s love. It entails being separated from our communities and drowning in our negative feelings—as Kevin is at the beginning of the film when he replays his family’s negative words about him. St. Ignatius describes desolation as a “darkness of soul, [a] disturbance in it, [and a] movement to things low and earthly.” Kevin’s treatment of the criminals is just that, “low and earthly.”

Yet Kevin seeks, and is moving toward, consolation, or spiritual solace and enrichment, throughout Home Alone . When the criminals, Harry and Marv, realize that Kevin recognizes them when they are staking out his neighborhood, they begin chasing him. And this is where the movie takes a spiritual turn that I see as the heartbeat of the film. Kevin runs toward that Catholic parish near his home. Just as he acted being an adult earlier in the movie, in this moment, he acts being a shepherd in a crèche, or nativity scene, outside the church. The criminals state that there is no way they are going in the church (“I’m not going in there!”) but, at this point, neither is Kevin.

Harry and Marv drive off, and the camera pans in on Kevin in this outside space, the parish doors close to him and spotlighted, but he does not enter. Kevin symbolically stays in a liminal spiritual place, outside of doors that would open for him if only dared enter them. With this said, it is not an accident that Kevin’s fear and loneliness lead him to a symbolic representation of the Incarnate God within the crèche. His soul is yearning for fulfillment, but he cannot appreciate or understand what he seeks. As soon as the criminals leave, he runs back toward his home, where he can remain King, not Christ, from whom he is now fleeing.

Back in his home, Kevin, for a while, finds the earthly dominion he seeks. He becomes a masterful orchestrator, embodying Michel Foucault’s classic theory of the panopticon. Foucault, in his Discipline and Punish provides a historical analysis spanning the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He examines the evolution of criminal codes and punitive measures, illustrating the shift from corporeal forms of torture to the ostensibly milder approach of imprisonment during this time frame. Foucault contends that the cessation of torture was not a consequence of increased social progress; rather, it marked a novel method for individuals to exert control over both one another and their environments.

In the panopticon, a prison design dating back to the late eighteenth century, a single watchman can observe all inmates without their knowledge of whether they are the specific ones being watched. This design induces a pervasive sense of constant surveillance. Like the watchman, Kevin’s meticulous planning and execution of traps within his home establishes a power dynamic between him and the criminals he fears that is reminiscent of the panopticon. In the microcosmic fortress of his home, he assumes the role of the unseen human authority, imposing consequences on those who pose a threat to his lordly reign. Foucault relates, “He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power.” In Kevin’s case, the criminals become the subjects of his imposed visibility, and the eight-year-old assumes the role of the wielder of power within his territory. Kevin’s dream is himself as both king and a self-assured, suburban adult, the two roles entwined in his mind. The dynamics shift through the course of the film, wherein Kevin transforms from a child at the mercy of his family’s unkindness to a mastermind orchestrating the consequences for those who have wronged him.

Ultimately, this exercise of power becomes a coping mechanism, a way for Kevin to reclaim agency in a world that has momentarily abandoned him. Just as the panopticon is a mechanism of discipline and power, Kevin’s traps become a means of control over his immediate surroundings. The intricate web of pranks, while appearing mischievous, reflects a deeper psychological need for autonomy and security, a manifestation of Kevin’s quest for solace and refuge in a realm where he can dictate the terms.

Importantly, as I mentioned at the beginning of this essay, Kevin in my estimation is not a spoiled rich kid who tortures others for fun. Instead, he is a hurt child, looking for God. And I believe he finds him. While the majority of the film focuses on Kevin’s relationship with the criminals, the heart of it focuses on his relationship with Marley, an elderly neighbor whom Kevin initially fears.

You might remember the name Marley from Charles Dickens’s 1843 A Christmas Carol . “Marley was dead: to begin with,” Dickens’s narrative about the meaning of Christmas opens. A former business partner of Scrooge, Marley serves as a cautionary specter, visiting Scrooge on Christmas Eve and reminding Scrooge that he will soon suffer a similar fate. Laden with heavy chains and money boxes, which symbolize a life consumed by greed and selfishness, Marley tells Scrooge that he will encounter three spirits and must heed their messages, or else, he, Scrooge, will be condemned in the afterlife to bear even weightier chains of his own greedy making. Scrooge has a decision to make: change his ways or lose his soul.

In the context of Kevin’s story, the name Marley carries spiritual weight. Kevin ought to listen to this old man, and he ought to contemplate whether he might suffer from a dismal fate, perhaps a fate like Marley who neighbors taunted, and, we later learn, whose family has abandoned him. Like Scrooge, Kevin at first dismisses and fears the Marley of this film. Kevin’s brother, Buzz, tells him that Marley is a serial killer called “the South Bend Shovel Slayer,” [1] when the two spot the man shoveling snow outside his home. Kevin believes Buzz, running away from Marley each time he sees him and acting as if he is a criminal just like Harry and Marv—only worse, it seems to him.

Yet at one of the film’s pivotal moments, when Kevin is afraid of the criminals coming to his house and believes he can do nothing to stop them, he finds Marley in an unexpected place and Marley acts unexpectedly. That night, Kevin had visited Santa Claus, or St. Nicholas, and he told him that all he wanted for Christmas was his family back. This “spoiled, rich kid” does not want toys. He does not want to be the head of his house, alone. He wants his family back—the ones who said terrible things about him.

Kevin then visits the Catholic church near his house, entering it while “O Holy Night” is being sung in the background. Like most eight-year-olds, he looks from one statue to the next, focusing on one of St. Francis of Assisi, who legendarily created the first Christmas crèche in 1223. “Fall on your knees,” we hear, “Christ is the Lord.” Kevin prays. Then, he is joined in his pew by Marley, who wishes him a “Merry Christmas.”

Kevin does not run from the old man this time. Instead, he confesses his sins. Marley tells him that everyone is “always welcome at church,” even those who have done bad things, as he suspects Kevin has throughout the year. Earlier, Marley had witnessed Kevin stealing a toothbrush from a convenience store, so Marley’s idea of Kevin is not baseless. Kevin explains that he has done numerous bad things throughout the year, but the worst is that he had wished ill will toward his family. Now, he recognizes that although they may not be perfect, he loves them—and should have treated them better.

At this point, Marley offers Kevin the most important advice within the movie, and what I read as the movie’s Christian moral: “Deep down, you’ll always love [your family]. But you can forget that you love them, and you can hurt them, and they can hurt you, and that’s not just because you’re young.” Kevin, here, is called to forgiveness, and I am reminded of what the Apostle Paul wrote to the Colossians, “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (3:13).

Although this moment may not precisely mirror the formal sacrament of reconciliation within the Catholic Church, given that Marley is not a priest, there is a palpable peace that permeates the encounter. The advice Marley imparts becomes a catalyst for Kevin’s journey toward forgiveness and spiritual consolation, echoing the Apostle Paul’s counsel to the Colossians. Likewise, Kevin counsels Marley, encouraging him to overcome his fear of talking to his estranged son, who has kept him away from his granddaughter now singing in the choir. Kevin fears honesty with his family in the same way Marley does with his family.

The Catechism , underscoring the concept of the Church as a “family of God,” refers to its parishioners as the “People of God.” In its deepest reality, the Church is not merely an organization or institution but a living family of God’s people united in Christ. The Catechism aptly states, “The Christian family is a communion of persons, a sign and image of the communion of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit. In the procreation and education of children, it reflects the Father’s work of creation.”

Kevin and Marley, through their shared vulnerability, form a bond resembling a parish family—one that mirrors the communion spoken of in the Catechism . This communion renews both of them, leading them toward reconciliation. In their connection, we witness the transformative power of vulnerability and shared struggles, echoing the communal essence of the Christian family. Before eating dinner that night, Kevin’s new sense of adulthood entails making the sign of the cross and praying before his meal. This is a far cry from making believe earlier in the film that he is shooting a pizza delivery boy and bragging that he has a whole cheese pizza to himself before he sits down to eat. While he still has much to learn, a sense of Kevin’s increasing move toward spiritual consolation is evident. He has a family of his own, but he also has a church family that includes Marley.

Adult viewers recalling the ending of Home Alone most likely remember Kevin as besting the criminals who break into his house. Yet, in the end, he does not. They grab him, poised to enact Hammurabi-style justice on him, hanging the boy on a hook on the back of a door and saying they plan to torture him physically. While Kevin may have conceived of his actions as pranks, the criminals are unbound by any enlightened principles of discipline and punishment. This critical juncture again echoes Foucault’s insights into the panopticon’s limitations. While Kevin’s traps and orchestrations within the microcosm of his home initially mirrored the panoptic power dynamic, the criminals’ unrestrained violence disrupts this paradigm. In the absence of structured discipline, the criminals embody a more primal form of justice, revealing the fragility of systems built solely on the concept of surveillance and control.

And here enters Marley, “the South Bend Shovel Slayer,” and part of Kevin’s Catholic church family. He takes his shovel and overcomes the criminals, saying these words to Kevin afterward: “Come on. Let’s get you home.” Kevin’s pilgrimage is over, and his playacting, his taking on the role of watchman and adult, could not save him. Marley saves him. Marley takes him home. He takes him to God. The days of discipline and punishment are over and have been disrupted. God’s saving grace changes the story. In this salvific act, Marley becomes the instrument leading Kevin not only to safety but also to a deeper understanding of himself as a child of Christ, culminating in the end of a spiritual journey with redemption and grace.

When Kevin’s mother finally arrives home the next morning, the first thing she says to him as she looks into his worried face is, “I’m sorry.” He runs into her arms, and his story of forgiveness feels complete. No family may ever be perfect, as Kevin discovers during his discussion with Marley in the church, but one’s family is always worth forgiving—and loving. As aforementioned, Kate is no Mary, but she is Kevin McCallister’s mother, and she realizes her mistake in overlooking him and asks for his pardon. This touching scene with Kate and her son echoes the tenderness found within the image of the Holy Family that we Catholics celebrate during Christmas. Kate fulfills a reunion with her son on Christmas Day.

As Kevin runs into his mother’s arms, another imagery is evoked: the iconic depiction of the prodigal son returning home to his family. While Kevin’s family physically forsakes him, leaving him alone, Kevin spiritually forsook his family because of the bitterness he felt and expressed toward them. Kevin is thus like the Prodigal Son in Jesus’s famous parable. He has lived a life of indulgence, taken his family and their material goods for granted, but he comes to regret his bitter feelings and his selfishness. Once he runs to his mother, the spiritual transformation within Kevin is complete, signified through the stern expression he gives her that gives way to a genuine, tear-filled smile.

In his heart, Kevin has now returned to his family: he has returned home. Luke 15:20 tells of the reunion of the Prodigal Son with his father, echoed in the hallway scene with Kevin and his mother: “And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.” When I visualize the scene from this parable, as I have many times as a Christian child and adult, I can easily superimpose Kevin’s joyous running toward his mother at the end of the movie to that of the Prodigal Son running toward his father. I invite you to use your imagination in this way now, to see the spiritual where perhaps before, like me, you may have been lost in the material.

After the rest of the McCallister family arrives and provides Kevin with accolades (letting us realize that Kevin’s one-sided picture of them was probably not a wholly accurate one), the movie feels joyous. Yet, significantly, it does not end with this family reunion scene. No, it concludes with Kevin walking by himself in contemplation to a nearby window and gazing outward. The image we see in that window along with Kevin is that of Marley reconciling with his son and hugging his granddaughter, a picture, one might say, of another icon of the Holy Family that ought to be appreciated as they gather together on this Christmas Day. Kevin stares at the tableaux in the window, reflecting on the scene.

Like Kevin, Marley’s pilgrimage is now concluded, and he is redeemed. Kevin, once boastful and reliant on his own cleverness, has found a shepherd in Marley, a guide who led him through the shadows of danger to the safety of home. It is a metaphorical representation of the divine shepherd leading the lost sheep back to the fold. A sacred picture of forgiveness, it mirrors the timeless stories depicted in the stained-glass windows of cathedrals, where the embrace of divine mercy is told through memorable images like that of the Good Shepherd.

Matthew 18:12–14 resonates here: “What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray.” Marley, in his act of saving Kevin, embodies the shepherd leaving the ninety-nine to rescue the one who went astray. Kevin’s pilgrimage, with Marley as his unexpected guide, becomes a parable of redemption, a journey back to the warmth of family and, symbolically, to the embrace of a higher power.

I considered ending this essay here, but I feel compelled to share one other experience my family had when watching this movie together. Last Christmastide, we watched this movie, and my children began joking about what they would do if criminals ever came to our house. Like Kevin, they planned and plotted. While we slept that night, our family car was stolen out of our driveway, our security cameras picking up only blurry images of those who took it. The irony was not lost on us—the whimsical discussions inspired by Home Alone mirrored in an unforeseen, real-life scenario. This unexpected twist, a concoction of humor and irony, reminded us that life’s script often unfolds in ways we least expect. Such unforeseen plot twists add layers to our personal narratives, emphasizing the importance of embracing the unexpected, trusting in divine providence, and finding redemption amidst life’s unpredictable turns. In the Catholic tradition, challenges are not merely obstacles but opportunities for grace and growth—lessons mirrored in the experiences of Kevin, Marley, and even Kate in the movie.

As we bring this analysis of  Home Alone to a close, let us bear in mind that life’s journey is replete with unexpected guides, unforeseen challenges, and, if we remain open to them, moments of profound redemption orchestrated by a higher power. In the broader context of our faith, being with God ensures that we never truly face the risk of being “home alone.” His presence becomes our refuge, transcending the uncertainties of this world and offering a sense of family, belonging, and, dare I say, security to our hearts.

[1] To take the Catholic reading of this film to its full extent, it bears noting that South Bend is the home of the University of Notre Dame, one of the most well-known Catholic universities in the United States and home to this journal. While Marley is not found to be a serial killer, that he hails from the town where Notre Dame is located is never questioned. This fact lends credence to the idea that Marley is a representative of the Catholic faith in the movie. Any astute reader would realize the claim this footnote makes about Marley is in no way a stretch.

Featured Image: Home Alone screencapture, Fair Use.

LuElla D’Amico

LuElla D’Amico is Associate Professor of English and the Women’s and Gender Studies Coordinator at the University of the Incarnate Word. She is the editor of Girls’ Series Fiction and American Popular Culture  and co-editor of  Reading Transatlantic Girlhood in the Long Nineteenth Century .

Read more by LuElla D’Amico

The Sham Practice of Christmas

December 12, 2018 | Haley Stewart

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Does Disney really think sequels and remakes are a good idea or have they just run out of good ideas?

How many Home Alone sequels can there be? Apparently, the geniuses at Disney believe the world can handle one more. An all-new cast is featured in this straight to Disney+ edition. While this 2021 film is rated PG for slapstick violence, rude material, and some language, is it suitable for the entire family? In this Home Sweet Home Alone Christian movie review, I give you the information you need to make informed decisions as a parent.

Synopsis of Home Sweet Home Alone

This latest installment in the Home Alone series begins with Jeff McKenzie (Rob Delaney) and his wife Pam (Ellie Kemper, who played Erin from The Office) hosting an open house to sell their home. They are talking with their relator, Gavin (played by Kenan Thompson), and a couple interested in buying the house. The couple is selling their home because Jeff has lost his job.

Meanwhile, Carol Mercer and her son Max (Archie Yates) are driving home when Max needs to use the restroom. They stop at the open house and pretend to be interested in buying the house so that Max can use the bathroom. The next day, the Mercer family travels to Japan for Christmas, and Max is left home alone.

When a valuable heirloom goes missing from the McKenzie house, Jeff believes that Max has stolen it and goes on a mission to retrieve his rare doll. Max, in a very Home Alone fashion, booby traps the inside and outside of the house to prevent the McKenzies from “kidnapping him.” 

Home Sweet Home Alone Christian Movie Review: What Parents May Want to Know

To summarize I think this movie has a sweet ending. Overall the message is one of “home is wherever the family is.” 

Potentially Objectionable Content

Max is mouthy and disrespectful towards his mother. Later, he apologizes for his attitude.

“Bloomin cousins” is said as a curse word as is “stinking.” 

Bullsh— is uttered but unfinished.

Furthermore, stupid, idiot, and other similar words are spoken. 

An adult says to a child, “guess who is #1 to get his head shaved.”

A man’s stomach is referred to as “jelly belly” and his buttocks as “flat pancake butt.”

There is a weird exchange of dialogue between a woman and a police officer. The officer says, “Nobody has been able to tame this wild stallion” because he is single. And the woman responds, “I envy the filly that ropes you in.” She continues to flirt with him.

The violence is in the same vein as the original Home Alone movie, such as slipping on ice, being hit with bags of flour, sugar, falling on steps that have been buttered, etc.

A snowball is thrown at a man’s face.

A woman hits a man with a pillow.

Other Content:

A boy dresses in his dad’s clothes and then his mom’s clothes.

A boy steals a drink, reads his sister’s diary, and imagines his mom in jail.

There is a scene that is a reference to ScarFace. A person is sitting at a desk with piles of candy and face plants into the M&M’s. 

A reference is made about someone looking through a woman’s underwear drawer.

A man’s boxer shorts are revealed when his pants are pulled down.

Also, parents lie to their kids.

My Viewing Recommendations

Obviously, it is rare for a 5th or 6th sequel to do well. Home Sweet Home Alone is no different. This storyline is poor. When I look back at the original Home Alone, it did well because it was different and unique. It had a good cast and some fantastic lines. 

Bottom line: Kids will like it because of the slapstick violence. Adults will hate it. Disney should have known better.

This is overall one of the worst movies I have watched. Find out what other movies have made my Worst Christmas Movies List.

FUN FACTS and EASTER EGGS with a nod to the original movie:

Buzz, Kevin’s brother from the original movie, is grown and a police officer. He talks about how they left his brother home alone. He references Kevin – “trout-sniffer.” 

However, Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) does not appear in this movie.

Additionally, there is a McCallister Security sign in the front yard of a house indicating that Kevin has gone into the home security business.

Once again, pizza is ordered from Little Nero’s.

The line from the first movie is said, “coincidence. I don’t think so.”

Of course, a man loses a tooth just as in the original movie.

As a man watches television a scene from what looks like Angels with Filthy Souls, which is the fictional gangster movie that Kevin watches in the original movie. The man says, “Uh, this is garbage. I don’t know why they are always trying to remake the classics. Never as good as the originals.”

Also, John Williams wrote the original score for Home Alone and some of it is played throughout this movie. Additionally, in a church scene, “ O Holy Night ,” is sung just like it was in the original movie. 

Additionally, the line, “Give up yet, or are you thirsty for more?” Is spoken.

How Many Home Alone Movies are there?

First, the original Home Alone was released in 1990 Rated PG

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York 1992 Rated PG

The 3rd movie in the franchise and the last to receive a theatrical release- Home Alone 3 1997 Rated PG

This movie features the McCallister family, but all the roles are played by different actors. Of course, Kevin has grown up. Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House 2002 – Not Rated

Home Alone: The Holiday Heist 2012 Not Rated

Finally, the 6th film in the series – Home Sweet Home Alone 2021 Rated PG

Disney+ Synopsis and Casting

20th Century Studios’ “Home Sweet Home Alone” is an all-new adventure comedy from the beloved holiday film franchise. Max Mercer is a mischievous and resourceful young boy. When he is left behind for the holidays, he believes someone is trying to kidnap him. However, a married couple is attempting to retrieve a priceless heirloom that they believe Max has stolen. It is up to Max to protect his home from the trespassers…and he will do whatever it takes to keep them out. Hilarious hijinks of epic proportions ensued, but despite the absolute chaos, Max comes to realize that there really is no place like home sweet home.

This Disney+ Day premiere debuts November 12, 2021.

Cast of Home Sweet Home Alone:

Pam McKenzie: Ellie Kemper (Unbreakable Kimmie Schmidt)

Jeff McKenzie: Rob Delaney (Deadpool 2)

Max Mercer: Archie Yates (JoJo Rabbit)

Carol Mercer: Aisling Bea 

Gavin: Kenan Thompson 

Hunter: Tim Simons

Uncle Blake: Pete Holmes 

Buzz: Devin Ratray (Home Alone)

Mei: Ally Maki (Toy Story 4)

Uncle Stu: Chris Parnell

Director: Dan Mazer

Screenplay by: Mikey Day & Streeter Seidell 

Story by: Mikey Day, Streeter Seidell & John Hughes

Producers: Hutch Parker and Dan Wilson

Executive Producer: Jeremiah Samuels

 Produced by 20th Century Studios

Length: 93 minutes

Rating: PG for slapstick violence, rude material, and some language

IMDb rating: 3.6/10

Rotten Tomatoes: Tomatometer 17%; Audience score 15%

Finally, where to watch Home Sweet Home Alone:

This movie is streaming exclusively on Disney Plus as is the original Home Alone.

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Must-See Top Holiday Movies

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Home Alone 2

Dove review.

“Home Alone 2” actually finds Kevin McCallister getting lost and being alone in the Big Apple, instead of home in Chicago. Kevin justs wants to be alone at the beginning of this film when his brother plays a trick on him at a Christmas concert and Kevin becomes angry with the entire family. He follows a man he thinks is hid dad (he is running ahead of Kevin and wears the same coat as his father) and while the family travels to Florida by plane for the holidays, Kevin winds up on one bound for New York. He stays at the Plaza Hotel, runs up a huge room service bill, and slowly begins to realize he misses his family and doesn’t want to be alone. The two bumbling criminals from the first film, Harry and Marv, have escaped prison and run into Kevin on New York’s busy streets.

We recommend this film for ages twelve and above as Kevin does such things as hit one of them in the head with a brick four times and arranges a staple gun so it gets the same criminal in the rear with a staple. He plays other pranks on them and it is comical and farcical, but the viewer should check out our content chart below. Kevin prays at the end and is sorry for what he has said to his family, and his mother thanks God when she finds him in New York.

Dove Rating Details

Comical violence - Kevin trips the criminals, gets one with a couple of staples in the rear, drops four bricks onto one's head, sets a rope they're coming down on fire, etc. Nothing graphic.

Criminal flirts with woman. Kevin pinches her rear so she will think the criminal did it.

D-1; Geez-3; Gol-derned-2; OMG-2; My God/Dear God-2; Poop-1; Screw*d up-1; Horse's A*s-1

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Home Alone (1990)

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‘home alone’: thr’s 1990 review.

On Nov. 16, 1990, 20th Century Fox unveiled the John Hughes-produced film in theaters, where it would go on to gross $285 million.

By Duane Bygre

Duane Bygre

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On Nov. 16, 1990, 20th Century Fox unveiled Home Alone in theaters, where it would go on to gross $285 million and launch a franchise for the studio. The Hollywood Reporter’s original review is below:

Writer-producer John Hughes’ first offering since he scurried back to his beloved Illinois, Home Alone is a polished comic celebration of Middle America with Hughes once again tapping the prosperous plains of his North Shore neighborhood for comic inspiration.

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It’s particularly overwhelming for 8-year-old Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) who, amid all the departure craziness, gets left behind. When he wakes up the next morning, he finds his big white house, overstuffed with family and relatives the night before, now eerily empty.

In this crazy but credible scenario, writer Hughes blends two of children’s tender spots: separation anxiety and its flip side, kids’ need to stretch their wings. During his stint as “man of the house,” young Kevin experiences both fear and elation. While there is no one to tuck him in or make him breakfast, there is also no one around to boss him around or to bully him.

Cross-cutting between the concerned parents’ Planes, Trains & Automobiles -type attempts to reach Kevin, and the young boy’s escapades, director Chris Columbus keeps the festivities lively and at a crackling, cheery tempo as the bright boy defends his hearth and home against the onslaughts of two cat burglars. This running battle between the boy and the two adults is the film’s comic highlight — one that kids will eat up — and Columbus pitches it to slapstick perfection.

In his performance as the home alone kid, Culkin carries the brunt of the production on his little shoulders spectacularly. —  Duane Byrge, originally published in “Reviews In Review” column on Nov. 13, 1990.

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Home Alone Review

01 Jan 1990

103 minutes

It’s easy to see how this cute high-concept comedy, from the fertile pen of John Hughes who adds kids to his cross section of mild middle-class American tribulation, became a minor phenomenon.  Its oh-so simple set-up — misunderstood sprog is forgotten in the family scrum to leave for a vacation, leaving him entirely to his own devices  — hits a gold seam of childhood fantasy, the wonderful collection of what-ifs of a world stripped of parental monitoring.

That it is set at Christmas adds an inspired whisp of Dickensian hardship. And that young Kevin, played with spark and comic timing by the impossibly cute Macaulay Culkin, must face off against two useless housebreakers grants the opportunity for a succession of Chuck Jones inspired hi-jinkery, giving the film a madcap energy lest it sink too deep into sentiment.

Spawning three sequels and numerous rip-offs, you could classify Home Alone as a seminal moment, but for all its naughty mania and wish fulfilment you can feel the rough gear-changes of processed scriptwriting hard-wired for effect. How we are meant to grin with infantile glee at Kevin’s unsupervised indulgences in adult videos, ice cream sundaes and interior sled-rides. And how we must chuckle and raise a cheer over his victoriously cunning booby traps, spread across his vast wood-panelled house, that leave long-suffering Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern permanently on their backsides.

It’s an ineffective cartoon form of violence where nothing, especially not criminal hide, is truly harmed. Which lands the film with an irritating but, perhaps, inevitable conceit — that it has one baby foot in the real world and one in purest fantasy. Kevin’s peril never really hits home, he just lives in a movie pitch. Otherwise, God knows the therapy he’ll need in adult life.

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Home Alone review – 1990 Christmas cracker resurfaces

Macaulay Culkin is nearly incandescent with confidence in the yuletide rerelease of Chris Columbus’ box-office smash

T he well-known 1990 Christmas romp from screenwriter John Hughes and director Chris Columbus gets a yuletide rerelease. For me, it is a cutesiness overload, but it was a phenomenal box-office smash and made a megastar of angelic 10-year-old Macaulay Culkin doing his famous “Aaaaaaaah!” face as he slapped his palms to his cheeks. His face was, in fact, stinging with the cologne he was putting on, a symbol of his unwonted grownup audacity and jeopardy.

A harassed extended family head off for France to celebrate Christmas , and in all the mad rush, impish little Kevin (Culkin) gets left behind. At first he thinks it’s a magical fulfilment of his wish that his annoying folks would disappear, but then a couple of burglars try to invade his house. Kevin ingeniously repels boarders, and he also finds time to provide a Christmas-miracle redemption for a local old guy with the Dickensian name of Mr Marley.

The two crooks are played by Daniel Stern and, startlingly, Joe Pesci – a light comedy role that was atypical for him, doing a big “pain” face as he gets shot by a small child in the balls. Culkin’s acting style is a bit broad and mannered, especially in the wacky speeded-up scenes where he whooshes madly about the house, but there’s no doubting the confidence with which the doe-eyed moppet carries this film. Nine years later, in M Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense , Haley Joel Osment pioneered a very different kind of child acting and child stardom: understated, with a tiny, thoughtful little voice. Well, that wouldn’t have worked for Home Alone. Perhaps it is impossible to see this film without thinking of Culkin’s melancholy adult career, but he is a vivid screen presence, almost incandescent with confidence.

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"Home Alone" is a splendid movie title because it evokes all sorts of scary nostalgia. Being left home alone, when you were a kid, meant hearing strange noises and being afraid to look in the basement - but it also meant doing all the things that grownups would tell you to stop doing, if they were there. Things like staying up to watch Johnny Carson, eating all the ice cream, and sleeping in your parents' bed.

"Home Alone" is about an 8-year-old hero who does all of those things, but unfortunately he also single-handedly stymies two house burglars by booby-trapping the house. And they're the kinds of traps that any 8-year-old could devise, if he had a budget of tens of thousands of dollars and the assistance of a crew of movie special effects people.

The movie's screenplay is by John Hughes , who sometimes shows a genius for remembering what it was like to be young. His best movies, such as " Sixteen Candles ," " The Breakfast Club ," " Ferris Bueller's Day Off " and " Planes, Trains and Automobiles ," find a way to be funny while still staying somewhere within the boundaries of remote plausibility. This time, he strays so far from his premise that the movie suffers.

If "Home Alone" had limited itself to the things that might possibly happen to a forgotten 8-year-old, I think I would have liked it more. What I didn't enjoy was the subplot involving the burglars ( Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern ), who are immediately spotted by little Kevin (Macaulay Culkin), and made the targets of his cleverness.

The movie opens in the Chicago suburbs with a houseful of people on the eve of a big family Christmas vacation in Paris. There are relatives and kids everywhere, and when the family oversleeps and has to race to the airport, Kevin is somehow overlooked in the shuffle. When he wakes up later that morning, the house is empty. So he makes the best of it.

A real kid would probably be more frightened than this movie character, and would probably cry. He might also try calling someone, or asking a neighbor for help. But in the contrived world of this movie, the only neighbor is an old coot who is rumored to be the Snow Shovel Murderer, and the phone doesn't work. When Kevin's parents discover they've forgotten him, they find it impossible to get anyone to follow through on their panicked calls - if anyone did so, the movie would be over.

The plot is so implausible that it makes it hard for us to really care about the plight of the kid. What works in the other direction, however, and almost carries the day, is the gifted performance by young Macaulay Culkin, as Kevin. Culkin is the little boy who co-starred with John Candy in " Uncle Buck ," and here he has to carry almost the whole movie. He has lots of challenging acting scenes, and he's up to them. I'm sure he got lots of help from director Chris Columbus , but he's got the stuff to begin with. He's such a confident and gifted little actor that I'd like to see him in a story I could care more about.

"Home Alone" isn't that story. When the burglars invade Kevin's home, they find themselves running a gamut of booby traps so elaborate they could have been concocted by Rube Goldberg - or by the berserk father in " Last House on the Left ." Because all plausibility is gone, we sit back, detached, to watch stunt men and special effects guys take over a movie that promised to be the kind of story audiences could identify with.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Home Alone (1990)

103 minutes

Joe Pesci as Harry

Daniel Stern as Marv

Roberts Blossom as Marley

MacAulay Culkin as Kevin

John Heard as Peter

Catherine O'Hara as Kate

John Candy as Gus Polinski

• John Williams

Photographed by

• Julio Macat

Directed by

• Chris Columbus
• Raja Gosnell

Written and Produced by

• John Hughes

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What's the best 'Home Alone' movie? Compare ratings for all six films

The Christmas holiday season is incomplete without at least one "Home Alone" rewatch: whether it's the original two movies in the franchise or the subsequent ones, the classic is in everyone's holiday movie night queue.

But which "Home Alone" film is the most popular among audiences? Which one has the highest ratings? Some might say it's the original ones, while others might find the newer ones to be more fun.

Here's an overview of how each film was received by viewers and we'll let you be the best judge.

'Home Alone' inflation: Kevin McCallister’s grocery haul in 1990 was $20. See what it would cost now.

Where to watch for Christmas 2023: 'Home Alone' streaming info, TV airtimes

'Home Alone' (1990)

• IMDb Rating - 7.7 / 10
• Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer - 66%
• Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score - 80%
• Meta Score - 63 / 100
• User Score - 8.2 / 10

The first installation in the "Home Alone" franchise is centered around Kevin McCallister, a naughty 8-year-old, who is accidentally left behind at home in Chicago, as his family flies to Paris for the Christmas holidays. While Kevin loves having the house to himself, he soon finds himself defending his house from a pair of determined burglars.

Released in 1990, the Christmas comedy was directed by Chris Columbus and written and produced by John Hughes. The first film in the "Home Alone" franchise features Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern, John Heard and Catherine O'Hara.

Where to stream: "Home Alone" is available to stream on Disney+ and will be available to stream on Hulu from January 1. It is also available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Google Play and YouTube.

What to know about 'Home Alone': From filming locations to Macaulay Culkin's age

'Home Alone 2: Lost in New York' (1992)

• IMDb - 6.9 / 10
• Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer - 35%
• Audience Score - 62%
• Meta Score - 46 / 100
• User Score - 7.0 / 10

Released two years after the first "Home Alone", the second film in the franchise is set in New York during Christmas. It was directed by Chris Columbus and written and produced by John Hughes.

The lead cast is similar to the first film and features Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern, John Heard and Catherine O'Hara reprising their original characters.

Where to stream: "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York" is available on Disney+, while Hulu subscribers will be able to stream the movie on January 1. It is also available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Google Play and YouTube.

'Home Alone 2': Kevin McAllister's uncle's NYC townhouse from film listed for $6.7 million

'Home Alone 3' (1997)

• IMDb Rating - 4.6 / 10
• Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer - 32%
• Audience Score - 27%

5 years after "Home Alone 2," a standalone sequel "Home Alone 3" was released featuring an entirely new protagonist and actors. The third film in the franchise was centered on 8-year-old Alex Pruitt living in Chicago, who tries to get rid of international spies who seek a top-secret computer chip in his toy car.

The film was directed by Raja Gosnell and written and co-produced by John Hughes. Cast members include Alex D. Linz, Scarlett Johansson, Haviland Morris, Olek Krupa, Rya Kihlstedt, Lenny Von Dohlen, David Thornton, Kevin Kilner, James Saito and Seth Smith.

Where to stream: "Home Alone 3" is available to stream on Disney+ and Hulu. It is also available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Google Play and YouTube.

'Home Alone 3 - Kevin's Revenge': Fans are begging for Macaulay Culkin to play Kevin McCallister in a new 'Home Alone' movie

'Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House' (2002)

• IMDb - 2.6 / 10
• Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score - 24 %

The 4th film in the "Home Alone" franchise, "Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House" brings back several characters from the original film, including Kevin and one half of the "Wet Bandits", Marv. However, the film does not feature any of the original cast members and is the first film to not have inputs from John Hughes, who conceived the "Home Alone" series. The film also did not have a theatrical release and went straight to television airing on ABC in November 2002.

In the film, Kevin's parents have split, and he goes to spend the holidays with his father Peter McCallister and his new girlfriend Natalie Kalban. Marv strikes again, along with his new sidekick and wife Vera and Kevin must protect his father's royal guest from being kidnapped by the two.

Where to stream: "Home Alone 4" is available to stream on Disney+ and can be rented or purchased at Apple TV or YouTube.

'Home Alone: The Holiday Heist' (2012)

• IMDb - 3.5 / 10
• Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score - 27%

Set in Maine, the film follows 8-year-old Finn Baxter, who thinks his new house is haunted and sets up traps to catch the ghost of the house's former occupant. Turns out he actually has to save the house and his sister from a trio of art thieves.

Directed by Peter Hewitt, lead cast members include Christian Martyn, Jodelle Ferland, Malcolm McDowell, Debi Mazar, and Eddie Steeples.

Where to stream: "Home Alone: The Holiday Heist" is available to stream on Disney+ and can be rented or purchased at Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Google TV and YouTube.

'Home Sweet Home Alone' (2021)

• IMDb Rating - 3.6 / 10
• Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer - 15%
• Totten Tomatoes Audience Score - 12%
• Meta Score - 35 / 100
• User Score - 1.6 / 10

When the naughty Max Mercer is left behind from a family vacation in Japan, he must protect his family home from a married couple attempting to steal a priceless heirloom.

Directed by Dan Mazer, the 2021 Christmas comedy stars Ellie Kemper, Rob Delaney, Archie Yates, Aisling Bea, Kenan Thompson, Pete Holmes, Ally Maki, and Chris Parnell. Devin Ratray, who played Buzz McCallister, Kevin's annoying elder brother in the first two films, reprises his role, essaying Officer Buzz McCallister in this one.

Where to stream: "Home Sweet Home Alone" is available to stream on Disney+ .

Did your favorite make the cut? The 15 most-watched holiday movies this season.

Saman Shafiq is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at [email protected] and follow her on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter @saman_shafiq7.

HOME ALONE 2: LOST IN NEW YORK

What You Need To Know:

In HOME ALONE 2: LOST IN NEW YORK, Kevin McCallister (Macauley Culkin) separates from his vacation-bound family for a wild adventure that involves defending his favorite toy store against crooks. The movie tries to outdo its predecessor with an added dose of slapstick violence, at the expense of original's most endearing qualities. Of course, HOME ALONE 2 affirms man's need for fellowship; however, the Christmas sentiments--such as good will and friendship--regrettably melt into a muddled humanism. For many, it was not the Kevin-vs-crooks showdown that made the original a success, but the storyline that affirmed Christian values, such as family, responsibility, repentance, and reconciliation.

(B, L, VVV, Ho, S, H, Pa, NA, C, M) Biblical messages of family, giving and friendship marred by 4 obscenities & 1 exclamatory profanity, as well as: explicit slapstick violence (man douses flaming head in kerosene-filled toilet--causing house to explode, man electrocuted by handling faucets connected to AC/DC welder (briefly transforming him into human skeleton), man's nose and derriere pierced with staples, man whacked with bricks, kerosene-saturated rope ignited while crooks climb down, missing step in ladder causes crooks to hit pavement face down, men whacked by huge lead pipe (twice), man hit on head with 100-pound bag of ready-to-mix cement, man saturated with paint), fist fights and physical assault; boy's pun unintentionally labels hotel clerk as homosexual; boy walks past skimpily-dressed prostitutes in street; humanistic approach to Christmas & vague New Age philosophy; some positive references to prayer and Christianity; petty theft; and, fallacies of "a good deed erases a bad one" and that Santa Claus is omnipresent.

More Detail:

In HOME ALONE 2: LOST IN NEW YORK, Kevin McCallister (Macauley Culkin) once again separates from his vacation-bound family for a wild adventure that involves defending his favorite toy store against crooks. Although Kevin manages to stick with his family all the way to the airport, he boards the wrong plane. Arriving in New York City, Kevin checks into the ritzy Plaza Hotel, where he lives it up. Eventually, Kevin meets up with the same crooks who robbed his house the year before. He overhears them planning to rob Duncan’s Toy Store at midnight on Christmas Eve. Kevin sets out to thwart their efforts, chasing them to an abandoned, booby-trapped house for a slapstick showdown that mimics the original.

Unfortunately, the violence is extreme and almost stressful to watch. Of course, HOME ALONE 2: LOST IN NEW YORK affirms man’s need for fellowship. However, the Christmas sentiments–such as good will and friendship–regrettably melt into a muddled humanism. For many, it was not the Kevin-vs-crooks showdown that made the original movie a success, but the clever storyline that affirmed family and Christian values, such as responsibility, repentance and reconciliation.

Now more than ever we’re bombarded by darkness in media, movies, and TV. Movieguide® has fought back for almost 40 years, working within Hollywood to propel uplifting and positive content. We’re proud to say we’ve collaborated with some of the top industry players to influence and redeem entertainment for Jesus. Still, the most influential person in Hollywood is you. The viewer.

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Home alone 2: lost in new york, common sense media reviewers.

Sequel takes slapstick shenanigans to NYC.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Not much in the way of positive messages; a vaguel

Taunting and insults among siblings, as well as pl

Plenty of comic, slapstick violence: The main char

Sign for "adult films."

Lots of insults and name-calling.

Could be a commercial for the Plaza Hotel in NYC.

Parents need to know that they can expect the same kind of slapstick violence in this second Home Alone movie, mostly against the robbers who picked on the wrong precocious kid once again. The main character throws bricks, sets deadly traps, and more in attempts to stop the bumbling duo and is gleefully proud…

Positive Messages

Not much in the way of positive messages; a vaguely pro-family message.

Positive Role Models

Taunting and insults among siblings, as well as plenty of lying and tormenting the stereotypical bumbling bad guys. Kevin befriends a homeless woman and encourages her to reach out to people more.

Violence & Scariness

Plenty of comic, slapstick violence: The main character throws bricks, shoots staples, sets deadly traps, and generally endangers the lives of the bad guys.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Could be a commercial for the Plaza Hotel in NYC. One young character has a can of Coke in his hands whenever shown.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that they can expect the same kind of slapstick violence in this second Home Alone movie, mostly against the robbers who picked on the wrong precocious kid once again. The main character throws bricks, sets deadly traps, and more in attempts to stop the bumbling duo and is gleefully proud of himself every time they get hurt. Parents should also know that the movie opens with quite a bit of family conflict and that there's fighting -- even some physical violence -- among siblings. There's a sign for adult films. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (25)
• Kids say (94)

Based on 25 parent reviews

ToTeporetermerter56 Elia Shllaku taxxtactactsct.

Home alone 2 - a woman being murdered is supposed to be funny, what's the story.

Here we go again. Kevin McAllister already got left Home Alone one Christmas; now he's on the wrong plane and headed to New York City while his family jets off to Miami for the holiday. Kevin ( Macaulay Culkin ), once again happy to be free of his boisterous family, sets out on an adventure in the big city. His father's credit card rents him a suite at the Plaza Hotel. Slapstick moments are provided by run-ins with the original movie's goofball villains, Harry and Marv ( Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern , respectively). The duo has escaped from prison and is planning to rob a toy store on Christmas Eve -- and Kevin's determined to stop them. Finally, Mom ( Catherine O'Hara ) realizes that her son's missing and frantically tries to find him.

Is It Any Good?

The early family scenes in Home Alone 2 are some of the movie's funniest moments, as are Kevin's clever survival schemes at the hotel and on the streets of New York. As a sequel, the movie manages to be funny, if predictable, and occasionally borders on heart-warming -- in an odd yet touching moment, Kevin befriends a homeless woman and encourages her to reach out to people more.

It's easy to see why fans took to Culkin's "little big guy" routine in the '90s. He's a charmer. And as Kevin's mom, Catherine O'Hara is a well-wrought mix of funny and sentimental.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about good ways to work out family conflicts. How does Kevin defend himself from his older brother's bullying? Was he right to do that?

Parents can also talk about safety issues, such as what might happen if a kid were accidentally separated from his parents and forced to go it alone in a strange city. What would be the safest way to respond to a mix-up like the one portrayed here?

Parents can also talk about the relationship between Kevin and his parents. Why does it take so long for his family to realize that he's missing?

How does this movie compare to the original? Is it as funny the second time around? Why or why not?

Movie Details

• In theaters : November 15, 1992
• On DVD or streaming : October 5, 1999
• Cast : Daniel Stern , Joe Pesci , Macaulay Culkin
• Director : Chris Columbus
• Studio : Sony Pictures
• Genre : Family and Kids
• Topics : Holidays
• Run time : 100 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG
• MPAA explanation : comic action and mild language.
• Last updated : December 24, 2023

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Home Alone 3

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Reviewed by: Samuel Chetty CONTRIBUTOR

the true meaning of the word “home”

value of optimistism / faith

being a misfit / not fitting in

What does the Bible say about intelligent life on other planets? Answer

Are we alone in the universe? Answer

Does Scripture refer to life in space? Answer

“Worlds collide”

“H ome” is an animated movie with a wild story about an alien species known as the Boov who move from planet to planet to escape their enemies, the Gorg aliens. The movie opens as the Boov arrive at their latest planet, Earth, and transport humans to Australia. A teenager girl, Tip (Rihanna), avoids being relocated. One particular Boov named Oh (Jim Parsons) is wanted by the Boov authorities due to an email blunder that revealed the Boov’s new location to the Gorg. Oh encounters Tip while he is on the run, and he agrees to help her find her mother in Australia, but that mission is complicated by encounters with police and the risk of Gorg invasion.

I found this to be an entertaining movie with dialog that is amusing, even though it is often silly, and the visual detail is impressive. There are also positive messages involving the importance of family and willingness to question conventional approaches and take risks. The Boov have a practice of never attempting something if their calculated chance of success is less than fifty percent, regardless of the risk/reward ratio or consequences of not taking action. Oh eventually learns that taking greater risks can be rewarding, which works fine in the scope of the movie. However, in real life people can become reckless and take major, unnecessary risks for a potentially large reward. If I were to expand Home’s message into a Christian-themed lesson, I would include discussion of faith and Biblical consideration of motives when going against the odds.

As for my overall opinion of “Home,” I think this is a good movie that is probably clean enough for most families to accept, and kids will enjoy the humor and action. Older children and adults, if they like animated comedy or adventure movies, will probably find this entertaining, as well. One thing I can say is that if you watch this movie, there is one scene that you will remember every time you see the Eiffel Tower!

Objectionable Content

Sexual Content: A male Boov is dressed in a girly outfit at a party. There is also a Boov shaking his posterior while dancing.

Violence: There are several scenes of spacecraft chases, sometimes involving destruction of buildings. A Boov is often seen running away from the police, and once he attacks a police officer in a food fight. The enemy alien character, present in several scenes, wears slightly scary-looking armor. A girl almost gets hit with a very sharp object. There is also the usual scene near the end where it looks like a main character has fallen to his death, but he resurfaces. Also, the main character is repeatedly threatened by the police of being “erased,” although that punishment is not defined.

Language: Someone says “curse you,” and a character is called an idiot.

Other: There is some bathroom humor, and a few instances of lying or promise-breaking. The main character plays a gambling machine on one occasion.

Violence: Mild to moderate / Profanity: None / Sex/Nudity: Minor

See list of Relevant Issues—questions-and-answers .

• Young people
• Non-viewer comments

PLEASE share your observations and insights to be posted here.

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Album review

On ‘The Tortured Poets Department,’ Taylor Swift Could Use an Editor

Over 16 songs (and a second LP), the pop superstar litigates her recent romances. But the themes, and familiar sonic backdrops, generate diminishing returns.

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By Lindsay Zoladz

If there has been a common thread — an invisible string, if you will — connecting the last few years of Taylor Swift’s output, it has been abundance.

Nearly 20 years into her career, Swift, 34, is more popular and prolific than ever, sating her ravenous fan base and expanding her cultural domination with a near-constant stream of music — five new albums plus four rerecorded ones since 2019 alone. Her last LP, “Midnights” from 2022, rolled out in multiple editions, each with its own extra songs and collectible covers. Her record-breaking Eras Tour is a three-and-a-half-hour marathon featuring 40-plus songs, including the revised 10-minute version of her lost-innocence ballad “All Too Well.” In this imperial era of her long reign, Swift has operated under the guiding principle that more is more.

What Swift reveals on her sprawling and often self-indulgent 11th LP, “The Tortured Poets Department,” is that this stretch of productivity and commercial success was also a tumultuous time for her, emotionally. “I can read your mind: ‘She’s having the time of her life,’” Swift sings on “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” a percolating track that evokes the glitter and adoration of the Eras Tour but admits, “All the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was chanting ‘more.’” And yet, that’s exactly what she continues to provide, announcing two hours after the release of “Poets” that — surprise! — there was a second “volume” of the album, “The Anthology,” featuring 15 additional, though largely superfluous, tracks.

Gone are the character studies and fictionalized narratives of Swift’s 2020 folk-pop albums “Folklore” and “Evermore.” The feverish “Tortured Poets Department” is a full-throated return to her specialty: autobiographical and sometimes spiteful tales of heartbreak, full of detailed, referential lyrics that her fans will delight in decoding.

Swift doesn’t name names, but she drops plenty of boldfaced clues about exiting a long-term cross-cultural relationship that has grown cold (the wrenching “So Long, London”), briefly taking up with a tattooed bad boy who raises the hackles of the more judgmental people in her life (the wild-eyed “But Daddy I Love Him”) and starting fresh with someone who makes her sing in — ahem — football metaphors (the weightless “The Alchemy”). The subject of the most headline-grabbing track on “The Anthology,” a fellow member of the Tortured Billionaires Club whom Swift reimagines as a high school bully, is right there in the title’s odd capitalization: “thanK you aIMee.”

At times, the album is a return to form. Its first two songs are potent reminders of how viscerally Swift can summon the flushed delirium of a doomed romance. The opener, “Fortnight,” a pulsing, synth-frosted duet with Post Malone, is chilly and controlled until lines like “I love you, it’s ruining my life” inspire the song to thaw and glow. Even better is the chatty, radiant title track , on which Swift’s voice glides across smooth keyboard arpeggios, self-deprecatingly comparing herself and her lover to more daring poets before concluding, “This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel, we’re modern idiots.” Many Swift songs get lost in dense thickets of their own vocabulary, but here the goofy particularity of the lyrics — chocolate bars, first-name nods to friends, a reference to the pop songwriter Charlie Puth ?! — is strangely humanizing.

Taylor Swift’s New Album Reviewed

For all its sprawl, though, “The Tortured Poets Department” is a curiously insular album, often cradled in the familiar, amniotic throb of Jack Antonoff’s production. ( Aaron Dessner of the National, who lends a more muted and organic sensibility to Swift’s sound, produced and helped write five tracks on the first album, and the majority of “The Anthology.”) Antonoff and Swift have been working together since he contributed to her blockbuster album “1989” from 2014, and he has become her most consistent collaborator. There is a sonic uniformity to much of “The Tortured Poets Department,” however — gauzy backdrops, gently thumping synths, drum machine rhythms that lock Swift into a clipped, chirping staccato — that suggests their partnership has become too comfortable and risks growing stale.

As the album goes on, Swift’s lyricism starts to feel unrestrained, imprecise and unnecessarily verbose. Breathless lines overflow and lead their melodies down circuitous paths. As they did on “Midnights,” internal rhymes multiply like recitations of dictionary pages: “Camera flashes, welcome bashes, get the matches, toss the ashes off the ledge,” she intones in a bouncy cadence on “Fresh Out the Slammer,” one of several songs that lean too heavily on rote prison metaphors. Narcotic imagery is another inspiration for some of Swift’s most trite and head-scratching writing: “Florida,” apparently, “is one hell of a drug.” If you say so!

That song , though, is one of the album’s best — a thunderous collaboration with the pop sorceress Florence Welch, who blows in like a gust of fresh air and allows Swift to harness a more theatrical and dynamic aesthetic. “Guilty as Sin?,” another lovely entry, is the rare Antonoff production that frames Swift’s voice not in rigid electronics but in a ’90s soft-rock atmosphere. On these tracks in particular, crisp Swiftian images emerge: an imagined lover’s “messy top-lip kiss,” 30-something friends who “all smell like weed or little babies.”

It would not be a Swift album without an overheated and disproportionately scaled revenge song, and there is a doozy here called “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?,” which bristles with indignation over a grand, booming palette. Given the enormous cultural power that Swift wields, and the fact that she has played dexterously with humor and irony elsewhere in her catalog, it’s surprising she doesn’t deliver this one with a (needed) wink.

Plenty of great artists are driven by feelings of being underestimated, and have had to find new targets for their ire once they become too successful to convincingly claim underdog status. Beyoncé, who has reached a similar moment in her career, has opted to look outward. On her recently released “Cowboy Carter,” she takes aim at the racist traditionalists lingering in the music industry and the idea of genre as a means of confinement or limitation.

Swift’s new project remains fixed on her internal world. The villains of “The Tortured Poets Department” are a few less famous exes and, on the unexpectedly venomous “But Daddy I Love Him,” the “wine moms” and “Sarahs and Hannahs in their Sunday best” who cluck their tongues at our narrator’s dating decisions. (Some might speculate that these are actually shots at her own fans.) “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” is probably the most satisfyingly vicious breakup song Swift has written since “All Too Well,” but it is predicated on a power imbalance that goes unquestioned. Is a clash between the smallest man and the biggest woman in the world a fair fight?

That’s a knotty question Swift might have been more keen to untangle on “Midnights,” an uneven LP that nonetheless found Swift asking deeper and more challenging questions about gender, power and adult womanhood than she does here. It is to the detriment of “The Tortured Poets Department” that a certain starry-eyed fascination with fairy tales has crept back into Swift’s lyricism. It is almost singularly focused on the salvation of romantic love; I tried to keep a tally of how many songs yearningly reference wedding rings and ran out of fingers. By the end, this perspective makes the album feel a bit hermetic, lacking the depth and taut structure of her best work.

Swift has been promoting this poetry-themed album with hand-typed lyrics, sponsored library installations and even an epilogue written in verse. A palpable love of language and a fascination with the ways words lock together in rhyme certainly courses through Swift’s writing. But poetry is not a marketing strategy or even an aesthetic — it’s a whole way of looking at the world and its language, turning them both upside down in search of new meanings and possibilities. It is also an art form in which, quite often and counter to the governing principle of Swift’s current empire, less is more.

Sylvia Plath once called poetry “a tyrannical discipline,” because the poet must “go so far and so fast in such a small space; you’ve got to burn away all the peripherals.” Great poets know how to condense, or at least how to edit. The sharpest moments of “The Tortured Poets Department” would be even more piercing in the absence of excess, but instead the clutter lingers, while Swift holds an unlit match.

Taylor Swift “The Tortured Poets Department” (Republic)

Inside the World of Taylor Swift

A Triumph at the Grammys: Taylor Swift made history  by winning her fourth album of the year at the 2024 edition of the awards, an event that saw women take many of the top awards .

‘The T ortured Poets Department’: Poets reacted to Swift’s new album name , weighing in on the pertinent question: What do the tortured poets think ?  

In the Public Eye: The budding romance between Swift and the football player Travis Kelce created a monocultural vortex that reached its apex  at the Super Bowl in Las Vegas. Ahead of kickoff, we revisited some key moments in their relationship .

Politics (Taylor’s Version): After months of anticipation, Swift made her first foray into the 2024 election for Super Tuesday with a bipartisan message on Instagram . The singer, who some believe has enough influence  to affect the result of the election , has yet to endorse a presidential candidate.

Conspiracy Theories: In recent months, conspiracy theories about Swift and her relationship with Kelce have proliferated , largely driven by supporters of former President Donald Trump . The pop star's fans are shaking them off .

Taylor Swift Renews Her Vows With Heartbreak in Audacious, Transfixing ‘Tortured Poets Department’: Album Review

By Chris Willman

Chris Willman

Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic

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For where it sits in her catalog musically, it feels like the synth-pop of “Midnights,” with most of the feel-good buzz stripped out; or like the less acoustic based moments of “Folklore” and “Evermore,” with her penchant for pure autobiography stripped back in. It feels bracing, and wounded, and cocky, and — not to be undervalued in this age — handmade, however many times she stacks her own vocals for an ironic or real choral effect. Occasionally the music gets stripped down all the way to a piano, but it has the effect of feeling naked even when she goes for a bop that feels big enough to join the setlist in her stadium tour resumption, like “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.”

The first time you listen to the album, you may be stricken by the “Wait, did she really just say that?” moments. (And no, we’re not referring to the already famous Charlie Puth shout-out, though that probably counts, too.) Whatever feeling you might have had hearing “Dear John” for the first time, if you’re old enough to go back that far with her, that may be the feeling you have here listening to the eviscerating “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” or a few other tracks that don’t take much in the way of prisoners. Going back to it, on second, fifth and tenth listens, it’s easier to keep track of the fact that the entire album is not that emotionally intense, and that there are romantic, fun and even silly numbers strewn throughout it, if those aren’t necessarily the most striking ones on first blush. Yes, it’s a pop album as much as a vein-opening album, although it may not produce the biggest number of Top 10 hits of anything in her catalog. It doesn’t seem designed not to produce those, either; returning co-producers Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner aren’t exactly looking to keep her off the radio. But it’s easily among her most lyrics-forward efforts, rife with a language lover’s wordplay, tumults of sequential similes and — her best weapon — moments of sheer bluntness.

Who is the worst man that she delights in writing about through the majority of the album? Perhaps not the one you were guessing, weeks ago. There are archetypal good guy and bad boy figures who have been part of her life, whom everyone will transpose onto this material. Coming into “Tortured Poets,” the joke was that someone should keep Joe Alwyn, publicly identified as her steady for six-plus years, under mental health watch when the album comes out. As it turns out, he will probably be able to sleep just fine. The other bloke, the one everyone assumed might be too inconsequential to trouble her or write about — let’s put another name to that archetype: Matty Healy of the 1975 — might lose a little sleep instead, if the fans decide that the cutting “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” and other lacerating songs are about him, instead. He might also have cause to feel flattered, because there are plenty of songs extolling him as an object of abject passion and the love of her life — in, literally, the song title “LOML” — before the figure who animated all this gets sliced down to size.

The older love, he gets all of one song, as far as can be ascertained: the not so subtly titled “So Long, London,” a dour sequel to 2019’s effusive “London Boy.” Well, he gets a bit more than that: The amusingly titled “Fresh Out the Slammer” devotes some verses to a man she paints as her longtime jailer (“Handcuffed to the spell I was under / For just one hour of sunshine / Years of labor, locks and ceilings / In the shade of how he was feeling.” But ultimately it’s really devoted to the “pretty baby” who’s her first phone call once she’s been sprung from the relationship she considered her prison.

It’s complicated, as they say. For most of the album, Swift seesaws between songs about being in thrall to never-before-experienced passion and personal compatibility with a guy from the wrong side of the tracks. She feels “Guilty as Sin?” for imagining a consummation that at first seems un-actionable, if far from unthinkable; she swears “But Daddy I Love Him” in the face of family disapproval; she thinks “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can),” before an epiphany slips out in the song’s hilariously anticlimactic final line: “Woah, maybe I can’t.” Then the most devastating songs about being ghosted pop up in the album’s later going.

Now, that, friends, is a righteous tirade. And it’s one of the most thrilling single moments in Swift’s recorded career. “But Daddy I Love Him” has a joke for a title (it’s a line borrowed from “The Little Mermaid”), but the song is an ecstatic companion piece to “That’s the Way I Loved You,” from her second album, now with Swift running off with the bad choice instead of just mourning him. It’s the rare song from her Antonoff/Dessner period that sounds like it could be out of the more “organic”-sounding, band-focused Nathan Chapman era, but with a much more matured writing now than then… even if the song is about embracing the immature.

The album gets off to a deceptively benign start with “Fortnight,” the collaboration with Post Malone that is its first single. Both he and the record’s other featured artist, Florence of Florence + the Machine , wrote the lyrics for their own sections, but Posty hangs back more, as opposed to the true duet with Florence; he echoes Swift’s leads before finally settling in with his own lines right at the end. Seemingly unconnected to the subject matter of the rest of the record, “Fortnight” seems a little like “Midnights” Lite. It rues a past quickie romance that the singer can’t quite move on from, even as she and her ex spend time with each other’s families. It’s breezy, and a good choice for pop radio, but not much of an indication of the more visceral, obsessive stuff to come.

The title track follows next and stays in the summer-breeze mode. It’s jangly-guitar-pop in the mode of “Mirrorball,” from “Folklore”… and it actually feels completely un-tortured, despite the ironic title. After the lovers bond over Charlie Puth being underrated (let’s watch those “One Call Away” streams soar), and over how “you’re not Dylan Thomas, I’m not Patti Smith,” an inter-artist romance seems firmly in place. “Who’s gonna hold you like me?” she asks aloud. (She later changes it to “troll you.”) She answers herself: “Nofuckinbody.” Sweet, and If you came to this album for any kind of idyll, enjoy this one while it lasts, which isn’t for long.

From here, the album is kind of all over the map, when it comes to whether she’s in the throes of passion or the throes of despair… with that epic poem in the album booklet to let you know how the pieces all fit together. (The album also includes a separate poem from Stevie Nicks, addressing the same love affair that is the main subject of the album, in a protective way.)

There are detours that don’t have to do with the romantic narrative, but not many. The collaboration with Florence + the Machine, “Florida!!!,” is the album’s funniest track, if maybe its least emotionally inconsequential. It’s literally about escape, and it provides some escapism right in the middle of the record, along with some BAM-BAM-BAM power-chord dynamics in an album that often otherwise trends soft. If you don’t laugh out loud the first time that Taylor’s and Florence’s voices come together in harmony to sing the line “Fuck me up, Florida,” this may not be the album for you.

When the album’s track list was first revealed, it almost seemed like one of those clever fakes that people delight in trolling the web with. Except, who would really believe that, instead of song titles like “Maroon,” Swift would suddenly be coming up with “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys,” “Fresh Out the Slammer,” “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” and “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”? This sounded like a Morrissey track list, not one of Swift’s. But she’s loosened up, in some tonal sense, even as she’s as serious as a heart attack on a lot of these songs. There is blood on the tracks, but also a wit in the way she’s employing language and being willing to make declarations that sound a little outlandish before they make you laugh.

Toward the end of the album, she presents three songs that aren’t “about” anybody else… just about, plainly, Taylor Swift. That’s true of “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?,” a song that almost sounds like an outtake from the “Reputation” album, or else a close cousin to “Folklore’s” “Mad Woman,” with Swift embracing the role of vengeful witch, in response to being treated as a circus freak — exact contemporary impetus unknown.

Whatever criticisms anyone will make of “The Tortured Poets Department,” though — not enough bangers? too personal? — “edge”-lessness shouldn’t be one of them. In this album’s most bracing songs, it’s like she brought a knife to a fistfight. There’s blood on the tracks, good blood.

Sure to be one of the most talked-about and replayed tracks, “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” has a touch of a Robyn-style dancing-through-tears ethos to it. But it’s clearly about the parts of the Eras Tour when she was at her lowest, and faking her way through it. “I’m so depressed I act like it’s my birthday — every day,” she sings, in the album’s peppiest number — one that recalls a more dance-oriented version of the previous album’s “Mastermind.” It’s not hard to imagine that when she resumes the tour in Paris next month, and has a new era to tag onto the end of the show, “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” might be the new climax, in place of “Karma.” “You know you’re good when you can do it with a broken heart,” she humble-brags, “and I’m good, ‘cause I’m miserable / And nobody even knows! / Try and come for my job.”

Not many superstars would devote an entire song to confessing that they’ve only pretended to be the super-happy figure fans thought they were seeing pass through their towns, and that they were seeing a illusion. (Presumably she doesn’t have to fake it in the present day, but that’s the story of the next album, maybe.) But that speaks to the dichotomy that has always been Taylor Swift: on record, as good and honest a confessional a singer-songwriter as any who ever passed through the ports of rock credibility; in concert, a great, fulsome entertainer like Cher squared. Fortunately, in Swift, we’ve never had to settle for just one or the other. No one else is coming for either job — our best heartbreak chronicler or our most uplifting popular entertainer. It’s like that woman in the movie theater says: Heartache feels good in a place like that. And it sure feels grand presented in its most distilled, least razzly-dazzly essence in “The Tortured Poets Department.”

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