A fun fact about me; if its popular I probably hate it. I have nothing against Home Alone. It’s just a movie that I don’t like. I never got the appeal, I never got into watching it, it was just a movie to me. Aside from the movie poster with Mccaulay Culkin clutching his face like he’s in Dali’s painting or the scene with Donald Trump, nothing really stands out to me. To be honest, both of those things may be from one of the Home Alone spinoffs. I really don’t know. The same can be said about Muppet’s Christmas Carol. Just a kid’s rendition of the famous Scrooge movie.
When it comes down to it, the Muppet’s Christmas Carol is more about Christmas. So I have to pick that to move onto the next round. I think. I might change my mind before I finish writing this.
I just have a hard time relating Home Alone to anything Christmas other than the setting of the movie. To me there is no deeper meaning that I can carve out; just another cute movie that was successful as a franchise. This is one thing, the fight at Christmas Eve dinner. Every family has one. I remember one time my Aunt Laraine got mad at my Uncle Norm during dinner one year and drunkenly yelled “YEAH AND FUCK YOU NORM!” and stormed out. Leaving the rest of the family confused as we continued to stuff our faces while my Aunt Kim, Laraine’s sister, cried.
You have to give it up to Kevin though. An 8 year old outsmarted his family and two robbers. Seriously, how can one kid fuck with two adult robbers so much. He fake shoots them, he really shoots them, he outsmarts them with flicking lights, heats up a door knob, USES A BLOW TORCH AS A WEAPON, tar and feathers them, cuts them with glass, and the list goes on. I mean the fact he did this all is stunning. I would never be able to think of some of these things and I’m a 25 year old dude.
The one REALLY Christmas-y thing that stands out to me is the bonding scene with Kevin and Marley. It goes back to why I think It’s a Wonderful Life is such a great movie. It shows the essence of family bonding. Something that the rest of the movie really makes into a big joke. Marley shows the viewers how debilitating it can be to not be around loved ones on Christmas. Kevin plays the same role as Clarence. He is the voice of reason, the one that encourages Marley to go back to his family.
Fun fact: John Candy improvised all of his lines, so that’s pretty cool.
A Muppet’s Christmas Carol really isn’t much better in terms of how much I can talk about it. If this were the real Christmas Carol we wouldn’t even be having the conversation. I would declare it the winner right now and end this whole blogging saga. Pack it up, mail it in. Have a good weekend in D.C. and never think about it again. However, we’re talking about a bastardized version made for kids that absolutely cheapens in. If you read Dickens or any of the authors from that time period the stories are entrenched in hidden messages, in-depth themes, and just an overall slobberknocker to read. Seriously, I read Great Expectations in my senior year of high school, I had to read the chapters multiple times to gather every thing and it was a fairly easy read and I would consider myself smart.
I don’t think the Muppet’s version captures that, no disrespect to Jim Henson. It is just too hard to follow the intricacy of the story. I almost can’t take it seriously and its hard to follow because I’m too focused on it supposedly being for kids. The ghosts, the Cratchit family, all of the characters just don’t resonate with me. With the plot of A Christmas Carol and with characters that teach preschoolers how to spell, something just seems off. I thought I was going to come in here and really promote this movie, but I can’t. I would rather promote the original.
For that, Home Alone barely edges out the competition.