WHAT’S your favourite Christmas movie, then? All-time classic It’s A Wonderful Life? The Muppet Christmas Carol? Elf? Die Hard? (Does that count?) Well, mine has always been Home Alone (a state of being I can only ever dream of nowadays).
Has there ever been a pluckier performance from a young up-and-comer than the loveable rogue Macaulay Culkin in Chris Columbus’s big breakout movie which, together with its sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, thrust bobble hats, threaded mittens, hunting jackets and Talkboys onto the heads, arms and torsos of a generation of children around the world? Eight-year-old Kevin goes to bed wishing he never had a family, only to wake up to the realisation that his entire extended clan have jetted off to Paris without him. As if things couldn’t get any worse, a pair of local burglars target the McCallisters’ sweeping mansion in the Chicago suburbs as the crowning glory of their petty criminal lives. Kevin’s canny knack for causing organised chaos, his indefatigable spirit, and his ability to deliver generation-defining one-liners and set-pieces (“Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal”, and that scream after a splash of Brut in the bathroom mirror) allow him to fend off his would-be home-raiders with a combination of deft skill and entertaining showmanship.
You could say it’s all a bit Celtic Football Club. Take Wednesday night, for example. Young up-and-comers? Check. Liel Abada, at 21, looked like the four weeks off for the World Cup had sprung his development on faster than a tin of paint swung from the top of a banister. There may be a few more kids sporting the No.11 shirt after Santa comes this weekend.
