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Beneath a December sky in Los Angeles, amid the festively adorned historic treasures of Heritage Square Museum, an unlikely ornithology of holiday cheer took flight.There, the notorious McCallisters from Home Alone films were playfully exhumed by Street Food Cinema’s Yuletide Cinemaland.
On this crisp Saturday night,the aroma of roasted chestnuts mingled with the bustling anticipation of viewers ready to revisit childhood favorites,Home Alone (1990) and Home alone 2: Lost in New York (1992). Decades since their release during the George H.W. Bush era, these films vibrantly remain driving forces of holiday nostalgia.
Generally speaking, the evening lived up to my eager anticipation. However, during the first film, necessitates a detour by my hunger pangs. I found myself embroiled in a tofu banh mi quest, a delay that caused me to miss a critical 45 minutes of Home Alone. The unlucky confluence of events involved a dining area separated from the main festivities and a frustratingly unhelpful line of impatient teenagers demanding Wagyu fries.
As Home Alone played out without me on the rustic, repurposed Methodist church that became our giddy concession stand, I slowly consumed – with mounting bitterness – my cold banh mi, realizing the cruel hand of fate was playing its own twisted game, just as the McCallisters deceitfully, repeatedly left their young son behind during frantic holiday travels.
This second viewing painted Home Alone through a different, slightly more cynical lens. The exorbitant wealth of the McCallister clan stood out, leaving me more inclined to sympathize with the blundering burglars, Marv and Harry, than with the chaotic, neglectful family.
The second film, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, further deepened my discomfort with the films’ underlying worldview. The depiction of New York City’s underbelly, with its pandemic of unseen threat in the shadows and the lonely plight of the Pigeon lady, seemed incongruously jarring amidst Kevin’s outlandish CONSUMPTION FOR ONE—limos filled with gifts, hotel suits, and endless pizza snacks. It was a reminder of the pervasive socio-economic anxieties of that time period, a body of depicted fear that emerged fully during events like the Central Park Five case. in fact, a cameo plays Donald Trump, hulking seemingly ever present in the Plaza Hotel lobby- a haunting reminder of the very escalating nightmare of tragedies, anxieties,
The concluding twist of the second film left me with a deeper, uncomfortable feeling. What was once a jovial, slapstick scene—where Kevin dupes a hotel staff and their assumed warming act of violence—felt chuck full of malice in 2024. Instead of amusement, I saw the fear that a young boy, who quite literally tricked people into believing that he had deadly artillery, could inflict on those who just wanted to travel safely and provide hospitality.
Even though the screen had gone dark and a bustling crowd hurried out, the thought of returning home, alone, lingered. We’d exiled the Home Alone perspectives for a few hours, but the sliver of reality that crept into our nostalgic spectacle reminded us that the world outside can feel unpredictable, and sometimes, even dangerous, no matter how many halls we set up with booby traps.
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