what made this movie so dang popular?
#1 for 12 weeks
finally lost to sleeping with the enemy
it was released mid-november, so gained the holiday traction
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MovieChat Forums > Home Alone (1990) Discussion > what made this movie so dang popular?
Well, it's a fun family film, the boy starring in it is cute, likeable, and imperfect, but learns his lesson about important stuff in life, the setting was beautiful for Christmas, it had a happy ending, and everyone loves watching the evil burglars get their asses kicked by the pranks the kid set up in the house. Plus it's fun watching an 8-year-old outwit two idiots, hehehe.
Can you believe even people overseas love this movie?!
How could Sleeping with the enemy beat Home Alone for any awards when it came out a year after it?
shareIt's an everything movie in almost perfect balance. Family movie, heist movie, crime, comedy, holiday, coming of age - only thing missing is romance unless you count Kevin's love for cheese pizza - and it completely encompasses all the feelings of the season, especially loneliness, which is what a lot of people more and more at this time of year, especially because they're surrounded by people and still feel alone.
shareI'm also surprised Edward Scissorhands wasn't able to make it to #1 in the box office due to the success of this film.
shareBack then this type of humor was popular. It didn't age well. These days they have to fart and talk about dicks to provoke laughter in the audience.
shareIn my opinion, this is not a particularly good movie, and it has very long stretches of 'boredom' and many scenes are too long anyway - the whole beginning with the family drama and the tickets and the attic and pizza and all that is just too long to wade through more than once.
It also doesn't make almost any sense at all, it stretches the suspension of disbelief thinner than most saturday morning cartoons with falling anvils and such.
I don't think all movies become popular because they're somehow amazing or good movies, or even have any kind of 'magic' to them. Some do, but this is not one of them.
There's nothing all that good or interesting about this movie, but as it has been 'professionally made', it has a 'sappy melancholy' about it, it's a 'christmas theme' movie, and it's 'safe viewing' for a family, it has been selected and picked a lot for watching with a family (you can't always watch all good movies with your family, because they are either too dark, have too much sexual content, too much cursing or violence.. err, forget the last part).
Then families watched it, and it was 'an OK experience' that panders to what women love (though, don't almost all movies..), so moms loved this movie due to all the 'cuteness', kids love it due to the cartoony violence and stupidity of the thugs, men tolerate it because everyone else in the family loves it and so on.
One good thing about this movie - it does NOT have 'injected romance'! So far, my list of such movies is rather small, maybe 7 movies altogether. I can only remember a few off the top of my head:
- Bad Taste
- Stand By Me
- Misery
There are more, thankfully, but can't remember them right now. Even 'Memento' is not fully free of this.. well, maybe 'Shutter Island'?
This is one of those movies, where circumstances conspired to make it popular without it having to be anything remarkable.
The other thing is, it isn't a particularly bad movie, it's well made, professionally slick, visually interesting sometimes, but maybe the icing on the cake that really sealed the deal is how good Macalay Culkin is as a child actor - he actually delivers. His performance is actually really star level, that's very rare for child actors as far as I know.
So him being 'adorable', but delivering his lines professionally basically makes the movie.
This movie is a mess when you watch it as an adult human being, but it has all these trappings for women that they can't resist (family theme, holiday stuff, tearjerking and heartstring-tugging bruteforce stuff, decorations, cuteness (or what passes as such), and so on). The only thing missing is 'injected romance', which I hate with a burning passion.
Of course the whole 'mom-son' stuff always appeals to women's nurturing instincts. Hey, don't kill the messenger..
As a movie, as a story, as a 'something to watch', this is 'passable' at best, but all these sort of superficial or superfluous elements combined easily make it very popular indeed. I never saw the point of watching this movie, but youtubers always react to it, so I have stomached it a few times, and the only things worth something about it in my opinion are the aforementioned child actor performance, some of the humor, the relatable old man stuff, the surreal basement monster-stuff (I wanted more of surreal stuff like this) and John Candy.
That's about it.. can't really think of anything else that appeals to me in this movie.
In my opinion this movie is factually below mediocre and not really worth watching, because we've seen it all before and it doesn't bring anything truly interesting or new. No exploration of new and amazing worlds/territories, no good spiritual message, no gorgeous nature scenes, no inspiring music, etc.
So although this movie itself, if you look at just what the movie actually is, is nothing to type home about, nothing to praise too much, doesn't give or deliver the viewer much of anything new or anything they have not seen before, it has SOME kind of charm (apparently), and Kevin is a 'cute character' with 'funnily childish worldview' that may make people nostalgic for their own childhood or something.
The 'wet bandits' are not more believable than the similar crooks in '101 Dalmatians', the stuff that doesn't make sense is just too much, the story really goes nowhere besides one tiny location (I want to explore galaxies, dangit!), so for an adult human being, there's nothing much here.
It gained popularity partially also because masses are incredibly stupid, and they will gobble anything that's more intelligent than them, which means even this movie seems brilliant to them. People also have a very formulaic, very predictable, very pattern-based way of living, so they HAVE to watch 'christmas movies' at christmas, so of course if there's a 'popular christmas movie', 'our family must also watch that', which just makes the popularity of a movie skyrocket exponentially.
(It's a bit like 'preselection' - if one woman loves a man, then the man must be worth something, so other women will love him, too - if other women love a man, then I must love him, too, etc..)
It's a slightly below mediocre movie that has basically been lifted to huge success by external hubris that makes it look better than it actually is.
This movie is a crossroad middle point of many paths to success - christmas theme, cute (and competent) child actor, goofy stuff for the kids, family cozyness and tearjerking soap for the women, and so on. The movie itself doesn't have to be brilliant when all these themes combine to do the heavy lifting for it.
THAT is why it's popular.
It's hard for me to believe its been this enduring christmas movie that has lived on for over 34 years. I didn't really think of that back in 1990 seeing it in theaters.
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