When Home Alone was released in 1990, I was nine years old. It was the perfect age to watch a feature-length film chronicling an upper-class kid's misadventures alone in his own house because I had only recently been given this privilege. So, obviously, the movie gave me lots of ideas as how to fill my time when David and Elaine and Margaret and Jackie were all out (which rarely happened, btw). Note: what the film did not provide me was any sense of how GODDAMN LUCKY Kevin was to live in a neighborhood in which the most threatening thing is two non-violent, bumble-headed burglars and a moderately grumpy old man. I don't think America really wants to see a movie depicting what happens to abandoned children in less peaceful domestic environs.
The scene in which Kevin is pigging out on junk food and watching a gangster movie (see again any violence he experiences is not real/fictionalized--okay, okay, i'll stop with my class critique) is among the film's most memorable. And the highlight, IMHO, is the ginormous bowl of ice cream. Seriously, there must be about twenty individual scoops in that concoction representing half a dozen flavors, not to mention toppings.
Amazing. I would recreate this ice cream feat next time I'm home alone except I know my cats would judge me.
