The year was 1990. I was a fresh-faced eight-year-old coming off a Grease and Mary Poppins obsession. I had heard rumblings about this promising new actor, Macaulay something, who was really shaking things up in Tinseltown. He had a new debut film about—get this—a kid who is left home alone. Like by himself. No grownups. No babysitter. No siblings. How did he eat dinner, I wondered? Reach the shower knobs? I didn’t know! But I had to find out!
Needless to say, I saw the movie three times in the theater, and it became a mainstay of my childhood, and quite possibly a precursor to any lingering abandonment issues I may now harbor. But as I’ve aged, I’ve wondered how it holds up. Does the comic violence seem horrifying to a parent in 2020? (Yes.) Does the plausibility of making it to Paris without your child ring true? (No, but go with it.) And most importantly, do kids today, thirty years after its initial release, still find it funny?
I watched it on Disney+ with my Kindergartener, George, to find out. Here, some excerpts from our conversation.
Mom: First things first. Did you like Home Alone?
George: I loved it!
