There's also this subplot with this old man that the kids around town believe to be a serial killer. You also have Catherine O'Hara, who plays the mom, doing whatever it is she can do to get back to Chicago to Kevin. But that's another thing that you can't build an entire movie out of. Maybe Kevin realizing that he loves and misses his family in spite of how they treat him. So I get that, but there's no actual narrative to speak of here. You can't build an entire movie out of a kid foiling the thieves' plans with his traps, eventually the jokes would be repeated and the law of diminishing returns would end up applying here. And, realistically speaking, I get why they left it all for the third act. So, for the most part, I felt that the movie was really killing time before they got to that point. The thieves do follow Kevin around and they scout out his house, but the actual traps that Kevin sets and their effects on the thieves is actually very minimal. Yet, it turns out that those segments of the film only, really, comprise like 15% of the entire movie. I haven't seen this movie in a long-ass time, seriously, and I remembered it being much more geared towards Kevin fucking over the thieves with various traps. Oh and he also has to deal with these thieves that want to go in his house to steal his family's shit since, naturally, they feel that they can handle him. He does everything he couldn't do when he didn't have a family, rinse and repeat. Kevin wakes up, finds out that his family is gone. I think the main problem with the film is that it's fairly repetitive. Those two have nothing in comparison with the minor exception that Hughes wrote both of them. Or at least it's a middle-of-the-road for him, considering that this is the same guy that wrote The Breakfast Club. John Hughes wrote some truly great movies in the 80s, but this is obviously not one of his best. That's not to say that I can't enjoy a film like this, as in something lighter in tone, I obviously have, but I don't think this movie has enough material to justify its own existence. It was never made to please critics or people like me, who appreciate well-written movies with strong character development. Though, if we're being honest, this movie was never meant to be more than a crowd-pleaser. But I digress, maybe this movie wasn't even good in the 90s, but I don't think time has been super kind to this.
Actually now that I think about it, it was Santa Claus since, later in the film after his family has left for Paris, he goes to one of Santa's 'representative' for him to tell Santa that all he wants for Christmas is his family back. I don't know who Kevin was asking for when he asked for this, but let's say it was Santa Claus. Like I said, there's certain some elements associated with the 'genre', like when Kevin, after an incident where he gets grounded after a fight with his brother and ruins the family dinner, wishes for his family to disappear. And, really, this movie is one of those holiday movies that takes place during the holidays, but isn't really completely centered on the holiday itself. They just happen to take place during the Christmas season and they certainly have some themes associated with the season, but they're not completely centered around Christmas with a, sort-of, tunnel vision where nothing else can come in. There's films like Bad Santa and Uncle Nick that try to subvert this genre with darker stories, but, even then, the end goal of the film isn't really about Christmas. You can only go a couple of ways with these films and, usually, filmmakers go for the sweet, sappy and corny. Christmas is, really, such a limiting concept. And I really think that that's the problem with a lot of these films. Some of the best holiday/Christmas movies are those movies that, really, have very little to do with Christmas.
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