‘Tis the season to get festive with some nostalgic holiday favorites, beginning with the classic 1990 film Home Alone. When you think about this movie, your first inclination might not be to consider the screenplay - after all, Maculay Culkin’s swagger or John Williams’ epic score are both right there.

But tell me, is it really Christmas without calling your loved ones a “filthy animal?” I don’t think so.

So let’s dive into this madcap and seemingly effortless seasonal treat.

OPENING IMAGE

Home Alone opens on the chaos of multiple families under one roof three days before Christmas. A police officer in a Chicago suburban home is trying to get someone’s - anyone’s - attention. This is the kind of extended family where the members do not tune in to anything but their own tasks. It’s mayhem.

Our introduction to our protagonist and hero comes without flare or preamble. “KEVIN McCALLISTER enters. He’s seven.” We are to find out that he is a lot more than that. His first line of dialogue gives us a hint, though. Kevin’s uncle won’t let him watch a movie - not because it’s too mature for him, but because his uncle is being a jerk.

Kevin interrupts his mom while she’s on the phone preparing for a family trip to France. He jumps on the bed. His dad comes in to tell him to pick up his toys. His mom reports that he’s been in the garage again, using the glue gun. He’s reprimanded for it (again). Turns out, he was using his dad’s good fish hooks to make Christmas ornaments.

His older siblings and cousins whirl around him as he tries to figure out how to pack his suitcase and learns he’ll be sleeping in the attic because older cousins will be camped out in his room. It’s all the chaos of family life times twelve because of the holidays and travel. At a fast pace, screenwriter John Hughes gives us a snapshot of life for mature-for-his-age-but-still-just-a-child Kevin McAllister along with very entertaining dialogue and memorable insults (“you’re what the French call Les Incompetant”).

On page 6, we get Kevin’s excellent foreshadowy declaration and wish: “This house is so full of people, it makes me sick! When I grow up and get married, I’m living alone!”

The evening only gets crazier from there, finally landing Kevin on a time out alone in the attic.

Meanwhile, the police officer - who winks at Kevin to reveal an upper right incisor that is gold - finally gets a moment with Kate, Kevin’s mom (played by the incomparable Catherine O’Hara), who apologizes for the pre-everyone-is-leaving-for-Paris-for-the-holidays chaos. When she comes back downstairs, he’s gone.

INCITING INCIDENT

That night, a storm knocks out the power. The next morning at 8:00 sharp, two airport minivans arrive and hammer on the door. If you thought the night before was madness, try getting fifteen people awake and out the door for a flight leaving in forty-five minutes because the McCallister family has slept in.

Passports, luggage, children…it’s literally a speed up racing sequence in the final cut. A neighbor kid bundled up wanders over and obliviously gets counted in Kevin’s place.

They run run Rudolph through the airport and make it to their seats just in time. Close call!

Except in the next scene, Kevin pokes his head out of the attic door. Decidedly not on the airplane.

He searches the house, calls out to his family, on guard asking if it’s a joke. Finally he looks out into the yard.

FUN AND GAMES

Leaving a child behind when the entire family heads out on an international trip during the holidays is bad enough, but the McCallisters have another, more sinister problem. That police officer from the opening scene is none other than Harry Lyme, a burglar who has staked out the block and knows every rich home that will be empty on Christmas.

But for Kevin, it’s the holiday he’s always wanted. No bullying older siblings. No parental punishments. No rules.

He eats ice cream, Cheetos, Pepsi. He gets into his brother’s Playboy magazines. He jumps on his sister’s bed eating microwave popcorn. And he finally gets to watch the ‘R’ rated movie about a Mobster pumping a guy named Snakes’ “guts fulla lead.” It’s too much for Kevin. He pauses the movie before he can see the carcass and finally calls out for…his mom.

Cut to Kate asleep in First Class, when her motherly instincts wake her up and she pinpoints what she’s forgotten: Kevin.

Hughes really shows his great sense of humor at every opportunity. While Kevin has the time of his life doing every death-defying thing his parents kept him from before (like sledding down the first floor stairway out into the front yard), his mother fights panic with oblivious in-laws.

That first night is when the burglars make their move. Little do they know that Kevin is having trouble sleeping. Turns out, being alone in a big house in the middle of the night at age seven is a scary thing.

He hears the burglars approach the house and, with some quick thinking, turns on the lights, the kitchen TV, and the radio, spooking Harry and his accomplice Marv. They haul ass out of there to regroup.

Meanwhile, the McCallister flight has finally landed and the entire family races to payphones to start calling anyone they know who might still be in town, but the phone lines are still down from the power outage the night before.

Kate does get through to the local police station, the first in a long line of obstacles in her attempt to recover her son. They switch her back and forth from the police department to family crisis intervention and back to the police department. People don’t listen. They aren’t helpful. They are not expedient. She finally gets them to agree to go check on Kevin. Her panic rises.

Meanwhile, there are no flights to Chicago, New York, Detroit, anywhere close by for two days. Everything is booked for the holidays. Kate sends her husband and the family off to the in-laws’ place and she remains at the airport hoping for a stand-by seat.

A police officer knocks on the door, but Kevin is too spooked by the burglars and the constant presence of “Old Man Marley,” his elder neighbor. He doesn’t answer the door. The cop shrugs and leaves.

MIDPOINT

Kevin continues to get up to mischief as he fulfills his duty of being the man of the house. He tries shaving just like his father. He climbs his brother’s shelves, breaking them and unleashing the pet tarantula. He goes shopping for a toothbrush approved by the American Dental Association. Along the way, he’s met with side quests and hijinx, like him accidentally stealing the toothbrush instead or lying his way through why he’s shopping alone at the age of seven.

While walking home, he encounters Harry and Marv in their burglar van having just overheard that the McCallisters are indeed in Paris on their neighbor’s answering machine while looting their place. Kevin recognizes Harry at the wheel.

They decide to follow a terrified Kevin home to see which house is his, but he outsmarts them, passing by his house and losing them by hiding in a Life-Size Nativity Scene.

Kevin has a new mission: defend his house.

BAD TO WORSE

That night when the burglars return, they find a party raging at the house. They’re baffled once again. These people are supposed to be in Paris.

Inside we get the reveal that Kevin has staged the appearance of a party. He’s outsmarted them again and bought himself some more time.

That night, we get a little glimpse at young Kevin’s remorse. He sleeps with a framed picture of his family, apologizes for making them disappear, and promises to never be a pain in the butt again if only they’ll come back.

Kate has meanwhile bargained, begged, and bought her way on a flight to Boston connecting to Detroit. It’s gonna be a long way back to Kevin, but at least she’s finally on her way.

The next day, mature Kevin goes shopping, does laundry and dishes, and catches Harry and Marv once again staking out his house. He hides and turns on his rated ‘R’ film, leading Marv to overhear what he thinks is a real mob-boss shoot-out.

But something isn’t quite sitting right with Harry. He waits it out and finally sees Kevin cut down a Christmas tree alone.

He realizes it’s just Kevin in that home alone (yes - he gets to utter the title of the film) so they decide to leave and come back after dark. ‘Cause “kids are scared of the dark.”

Meanwhile, it’s Christmas Eve. Kate is stuck in Detroit. She hasn’t slept in 60 hours. Everything is booked. She’s crashing out on a Ticket Agent when she’s overheard by Gus Polinski, Polka King of the Midwest. He and his band, the Kenosha Kickers, are driving through “Chi-Town” on their way to play a Christmas gig in Wisconsin and he offers to give her a ride. Because it’s Christmas.

That night, Kevin prepares. He goes to Santa and solemnly asks for no gifts, just his family back. He walks through a neighborhood filled with families enjoying Christmas Eve together. He goes into a church…where he meets Old Man Marley and learns that he’s just a lonely old man who is estranged from his son and granddaughter.

They share a sweet moment, discuss family and intention, and shake hands. Hughes gives us a lovely line that you can only feel while watching the film but that is so sweetly written in the script: “It feels good to Kevin to touch another person.”

But there’s no time to linger. The crooks are coming.

We know what happens next: Kevin brilliantly foils and tortures the persistent burglars with plenty of callbacks to moments that had been peppered throughout the script (like the tarantula). They chase him, hobbling, through his house and finally over to the neighbors’ now looted and flooding home, where they finally outsmart him. Instead of following him, they run around, predicting his movements and pinning him.

The fun and games are over. He’s just a little, defenseless boy against two full-grown adult male criminals.

But luckily, he’s no longer alone. Marley shows up, knocks them out with the snow shovel that had frightened Kevin only hours before, and saves him.

The true cops come and take the burglars away.

ALL IS LOST

But Kevin is still home alone on Christmas Eve. He leaves out cookies and milk for Santa, carrots for the reindeer. He places presents under the tree. He goes to bed.

FINALE

He awakes to a snowy Christmas morning and dashes down the stairs, convinced his mom will be there. But she’s not. No one is.

He could throw a tantrum…but he thinks better of it. He has changed.

And that’s when the polka music starts to play.

Kate has made it in time for Christmas. They have a tearful reunion. “He suddenly throws his arms around her and squeezes her for all he’s worth.”

(GAH, Hughes really writes a beautiful screenplay. Remember, this is also the man that gave us Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Breakfast Club).

Touchingly, Kevin also asks where everyone else is. As Kate begins to tell him they couldn’t make it home…boom — the front door swings open and in stumbles the “haggard, bickering remainder of the family.” Turns out, they wanted the family to be together for Christmas.