We need to talk about Kevin, Harry, and Marv: Adulting with 'Home Alone'

We are well and truly in the bull’s eye of the festive season, meaning that if you are considering getting on a plane, it is time to leave a young blond boy in charge of your home to ward off a pair of opportunistic burglars using swinging irons, venomous tarantulas and doorknobs hotter than lava. All set to the backdrop of classic Christmas songs.

Forcing it on the new generation

For years, I have been urging my dear children to do their childhood duty and watch the first two Home Alone films with me, an instruction they have either dutifully ignored or mocked mercilessly. “How can you watch something so unrealistic?” the eldest will ponder, (temporarily ignoring his own admiration for that revered realistic fiction hero, Doctor Strange).

This year I did the next best thing: I presented a truly hideous alternative to con them into a Home Alone marathon. “Guys, fold all your laundry and take it upstairs,” I announced. Before they could scatter like marbles, I turned on the first Home Alone to the opening scene to study Joe Pesci’s bewildered fake policeman (Harry) eyeing the total chaos running rampant in the McAllister family home.

Like most children, my kids approach laundry with the same caution they would afford an undulating python. Thus by the time Kevin was being marched upstairs by his mother to an un-insulated attic for being the only one of 15 people in the house to cause any trouble, I had three unwitting audience members on the sofa with me. They later grudgingly admitted experiencing mild amusement, with the highlight being Donald Trump’s Plaza Hotel cameo in the second film. Whilst I confess to being less moved by Trump’s consummate acting skills, I have documented my unfiltered thoughts on revisiting this holiday classic as an adult.

Flying blind parenting

Memes have been polluting the online world where we are offered a picture of the McAllister family home above a caption asking just what Kevin’s father, Peter, did to be able to afford this gigantic palace of a house. I am assuming this easily befuddled internet community did not study Kevin’s mother Kate’s crisp ironed pantsuits in any depth. This is not the uniform of a stay-at-home mother. Someone whose days are swallowed up cleaning that monstrous house (which has a lot of windows) does not dress in a pantsuit for a pizza dinner the night before the whole family is scheduled to travel. This is a woman whose bank account is as robust as her husband’s – as is evidenced by the speed and casualness with which she whips out a thick wad of cash for the poor pizza boy hanging around hoping one of these floating adults will pay him. She also assumes an eight-year-old can pack his own suitcase for an international holiday. Ergo, here is a woman who has a lot more things on her mind than the uncomfortable truth that an eight-year-old is far more likely to pack bricks in his suitcase than a toothbrush. She is also the only person her son aches for when he is craving a return to normality, meaning that in addition to her pantsuit-wearing job, she has nailed this parenting gig – something her husband did not manage in either film.

Since we are on the subject of parents, we must address the fact that they are raising a family of psychopaths. Their eldest son is raising a venomous tarantula, and their youngest is willing to murder a couple of burglars. The fact that does not actually succeed is all down to Harry and Marv’s stunning mental and bodily resilience, which we will get to momentarily.

I blame the name. There is something inherently wrong with the name Kevin, and those who stupidly disregard this hypothesis are invited to undertake a character study of the novel We Need To Talk About Kevin, which is about a different Kevin but one who is as much of a psychopath as Kevin McCallister. Novel Kevin’s victims are made of far less sturdy stuff than Harry and Marv, however, and carelessly perish as they are pierced with an arrow (as in a bow and arrow) when their Kevin goes on a killing spree at his high school. (Harry and Marv would just laugh and laugh.) Perhaps if Kate and Peter had called their son something harmless like Greg or Charles, they could actually have had a more conventional child who would have phoned the police when these hopeful burglars rocked up, instead of trying to kill them with an iron or Buzz’s tarantula.

The Wet Bandits

How can we discuss Home Alone without paying homage to the extraordinary resilience of Harry and Marv, parading charmingly under the name Wet Bandits? Not only do they dream up a cunning title for themselves, they suffer all manner of abuse from this pest of a child. Do they ever consider throwing in the towel? Or dying? Never.

“Why don’t they just give up?” asked my youngest after Marv was pummelled by a plummeting brick for the third time in the second film. The answer is that Harry and Marv seek out danger and revenge like a planet seeks orbit. Giving up is simply not on their agenda. These are the guys who managed to outwit prison officials despite repeated head injuries during their first encounter with Kevin. As anyone who has watched Prison Break knows (incidentally, yet another John Heard offering, who also played Kevin’s father), escaping jail is a complex task, usually requiring extensive blueprints tattooed on one’s entire body. And yet Harry and Marv pull it off without any tattoos, which is maybe an option Michael Schofield of Prison Break could have explored.

Marv later overcomes the brick situation by suffering temporarily blurry vision and an unsteady gait lasting precisely the length of time it takes to scale one flight of stairs (after which he plummets to the basement and somehow has the fortitude to rise again. His other accomplishments braving through after being hit in the face with an iron. He gets electrocuted to within an inch of his life and continues unimpeded (rendering Harry’s “I don’t care if I get the chair, I’m going to get that kid” declaration slightly meaningless since Marv has proved that a high dose of electricity is uncomfortable but certainly survivable.) Harry later has his hair burned off and pulls off a handstand that Olympic gymnasts dream of by dunking his head in a nearby toilet. Together, Harry and Marv are all but drowned in cans of varnish. And finally, far worse than all of this torture combined, they are attacked by the vilest, most horrifying creatures in existence: pigeons. Now you tell me – are two people who can overcome all this trauma not the finest of case studies in resilience? I believe so.

I will leave you alone to ponder over the bravery of this criminal duo in peace as I now seek out an alternative even more hideous than laundry to con my children into folding it.