Slough, England:
We’re well and truly in the bull’s-eye of the festive season, which means if you’re thinking about getting on a plane, now’s the time to get a young blonde boy on your side. Leave the house in charge to fend off a pair of opportunistic thieves using swinging irons. , venomous tarantulas and doorknobs hotter than lava. Perfect for the background of classic Christmas songs.
forcing it on a new generation
For years, I’ve urged my beloved children to do their childhood duty and watch the first two Home Alone movies with me, an instruction they’ve either dutifully ignored or mercilessly scoffed at. . “How can you see something so unreal?” The greatest would consider, (temporarily ignoring his admiration for that venerable realistic fiction hero Dr. Strange).
This year I did the next best thing: I came up with a really hideous alternative to getting them into a Home Alone marathon. “Guys, fold all your laundry and take it upstairs,” I announced. Before they crumbled like marbles, I turned on the first Home Alone to the opening scene to study Joe Pesci’s astonishing fake cop (Harry) wreaking havoc on the McAllister family home. was watching
Like most kids, mine approach laundry with the same caution they would an untamed python. So while Kevin was being led by his mother to an uninsulated attic that was the only one of the 15 people in the house to cause any trouble, I had three unwitting listeners on the sofa. He later admits ruefully to light entertainment, the highlight of which is Donald Trump’s Plaza Hotel cameo in the second film. While I admit to being less than impressed with Trump’s excellent acting skills, I have documented my unfiltered thoughts on revisiting this holiday classic as an adult.
Flying Blind Parenting
Memes are polluting the world online where we are presented with a photo of the McAllister family home above a caption asking what Kevin’s father Peter did to afford this huge palace of a house. . I’m assuming this easily confused internet community hasn’t studied Kevin’s mother Kate’s crisply ironed pantsuits in any depth. This is not the stay-at-home mom uniform. Someone whose days have been swallowed up cleaning this monster house (with lots of windows) doesn’t wear a pantsuit to pizza dinner the night before a family trip. This is a woman whose bank account is as strong as her husband’s – as evidenced by the speed and recklessness with which she hangs on to the poor pizza boy in the hope that one of them floats. The wind will pay for it. She also assumes that an eight-year-old can pack her suitcase for an international vacation. So, here’s a woman who has a lot more on her mind than the uncomfortable fact that an eight-year-old is more likely to pack bricks in her suitcase than a toothbrush. She’s the only person her son is aching for when he’s desperate for a return to normality, which means that in addition to his pantsuit-wearing job, he’s nailed the parenting gig. is – which her husband has not managed in any film.
Since we are on the subject of parents, we should focus on the fact that they are raising a family of psychopaths. Their oldest son is raising poisonous tarantulas, and their youngest is ready to kill some thieves. The fact that it doesn’t actually succeed is all down to Harry and Marv’s amazing mental and physical resilience, which we’ll get to in a moment.
I blame the name. There is something inherently wrong with the name Kevin, and those who foolishly ignore this assumption need to read Kevin’s novel Let’s Talk About Kevin, which is about a different Kevin but one. A character study about a psychopath is invited. Kevin McCallister. Kevin’s victims in the novel are made of much less sturdy stuff than Harry and Maru, however, and are carelessly killed because their Kevins are shot with arrows (such as bows and arrows) when they go on a killing spree at their high school. like an arrow) is pierced by. (Harry and Marv just laughed and laughed.) Maybe if Kate and Peter had called their son as harmless as Greg or Charles, they would have actually had a more conventional child who would have called the police when these hopeful burglars made a fuss. would do Trying to kill them with an iron or a buzz tarantula.
Wet bandits
How can we talk about the house without paying tribute to Harry and Maru’s extraordinary resilience, without charmingly parading around as wet bandits? Not only do they dream up a clever title for themselves, but they are subjected to all sorts of abuse from this vermin of a child. Do they ever consider throwing in the towel? Or dying? never
“Why don’t they just give up?” asked my youngest after Maru was hit by a falling brick for the third time in the second movie. The answer is that Harry and Marv are looking for danger and revenge like a planet is looking for orbit. Abandonment is not on their agenda. They are the ones who managed to outwit the prison officials despite suffering repeated head injuries during their first encounter with Kevin. As anyone who’s seen Prison Break knows (incidentally, another John Heard performance, who also played Kevin’s father), breaking out of prison is a complicated task, usually with someone It requires extensive tattoo blueprints all over the body. And yet Harry and Marv pull it off without any tattoos, which is probably an option Prison Break’s Michael Schofield would have explored.
Maru later overcomes the brick situation by suffering from a temporary blur and an unsteady gait that takes time to scale a flight of stairs (after which he falls into the basement. And somehow has the courage to get up again. His other feats of bravery are electrocuted to within an inch of his life (Harry’s “No It doesn’t matter if I get a chair (Got, I’ll have that baby” declaration is somewhat pointless as Maru has proven that high amounts of electricity are uncomfortable but certainly survivable.) Harry later burns his hair and a Pulling off the handstand that Olympic gymnasts dream of putting their heads together in a toilet, Harry and Maru are all doused in a can of varnish and finally, worse than all that torture, on them. The most terrifying in existence Creatures Attacked: Pigeons Now you tell me – those two people who can overcome all these traumas aren’t the best of case studies in resilience? I believe so.
I’ll leave you alone to contemplate the heroics of this criminal duo in peace as I now find an even more hideous alternative than laundry to force my children to fold.
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