Kid Power Conquers Hollywood

A spate of juvenile movies draws crowds of all ages -- and shows just who is the boss at the box office

By Richard Corliss Monday, Jan. 07, 1991

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    In mid-'80s comedies like Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club , Hughes ; proved he could speak to and through teenagers. Paramount's Ned Tanen aptly called Hughes "the Steven Spielberg of youth comedy." His later films — Uncle Buck, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation — have shown him to be Stephen King's benign twin. Both deal with worst-case what-ifs, but Hughes works the sunnier side of the street. Where King sees horror — in childhood abandonment, in the convulsions of adolescence — Hughes finds humor. For King's teens, horror is sex and death, a corpse in a clinch. But Kevin makes fear his friend; he psychs himself into a hero's role and plays it out in real life.

    Correction: reel life. For Home Alone , as artfully directed by Chris Columbus, is a flat-out fantasy decorated with suburban furniture. Which is why the inevitable Op-Ed grumbling, like a New York Times piece that called the movie "Christmas on Elm Street," misses every point the movie makes. Lighten up, Grinches. See the lines at the mall multiplexes. Everybody is going, from tots to teens, yuppies to grannies. Everyone is laughing at the same jokes. Everyone comes out feeling pretty good. Home Alone turns the movie house into what it used to be but rarely is: an ad hoc community, bathing in fond sentiment and boisterous wit. And perhaps that is the best thing kid power can hope to deliver to an America that may have little else to believe in, laugh about or cherish.

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