"Home Alone" is a splendid movie title because it evokes all sorts of
scary nostalgia. Being left home alone, when you were a kid, meant
hearing strange noises and being afraid to look in the basement - but it
also meant doing all the things that grownups would tell you to stop
doing, if they were there. Things like staying up to watch Johnny
Carson, eating all the ice cream, and sleeping in your parents' bed.Home Alone" is about an 8-year-old hero who does all of those
things, but unfortunately he also single-handedly stymies two house
burglars by booby-trapping the house. And they're the kinds of traps
that any 8-year-old could devise, if he had a budget of tens of
thousands of dollars and the assistance of a crew of movie special
effects people.
