No, he could not call the police. A tree fell on his phone line and disconnected his house.
And his parents did notify the police, but the police were, A: completely incredulous, B: completely incompetent and uninterested. They came and knocked on the door, but Kevin was still scared and confused and was hiding under his parents bed the whole time. The cop just gave up and left.
Source: I watched the movie again... and I am going to do so this year along with a Die Hard trilogy (I never watched the third movie) marathon.
Kevin is a shop lifter after he panics with the tooth brush. Since he learned never to trust cops, he assumes he'd get thrown in jail like the hardened criminal he is... And then there's the cop who's trying to break into his house. Yeah, can't blame him for not making that call.
Yeah, the first movie pretty clearly lays out why he didn’t want to call the cops. Also, IIRC, the snow storm knocked out the phone lines. His parents mention that they can’t get ahold of him because the lines are down. So he couldn’t have called them even if he tried.
The second movie though? He was a predator stalking his prey. He wasn’t just a victim of a break-in. He actively lured them to his twisted funhouse, and didn’t call the cops until the very end when he wanted them to get caught red-handed.
He didnt call the police because the phone lines are being worked on in one of the opening scenes before we even see the McCallisters and presumably are down.
His parents couldn't even call home to make sure he was okay.
There’s no difference between those lines at the local level. The only long distance lines would be the oceanic ones.
E: does nobody know how old lines worked? I can’t believe the number of people trying to force some twist to make their version work. The phone repair guy was right there on the residential street. If local lines were down, no in/out calls would work, yet Kevin ordered pizza and called the cops locally. It’s a huge leap to assume that this area would have had a side junction to separate international calls to a different system. Extremely unlikely, and that would probably be a feature reserved for businesses that needed to make such calls regularly. Old lines just weren’t run for international like that on analog runs for regular homes. His family were able to call friends and neighbors from overseas to see if they were home. So those lines weren’t down even if for some bizarre reason they were separate.
It’s just a plot hole. NBD. Enjoy the movie.
E2: digging around on the internet people have pointed out the plot hole. The only scenario where it would work is full of “ifs” that allow international calls in through a separate system, but nonetheless, it would basically only have to affect that one house getting perfectly hit to knock out international but not local by the tree branch yet nearby neighbors get calls on their answering machines from overseas.
I’m not pursuing this further, lol. It’s just entertainment. I’m not going to ruin the fun with over-analysis and bickering over “but if…”
I'm not sure that was true in 1990 in the United States. In the old analog networks, the central offices could route calls locally among phone numbers that shared the same central office, which was basically any number that had the same first 3 digits of the 7 digit number under the North American Numbering Plan. At least for the suburban neighborhood I grew up in, in the 80's, the neighborhood pizza places had the same central office code as my home phone number.
It wasn't until the rise of digital switching that the phone number itself got decoupled from the actual network topography, and things like number portability became possible. But in the analog systems they wanted to minimize switching where possible, so "local" calls weren't all equally local.
And the mom/fam was able to call from overseas to local PD, and leave various messages with friends or neighbors to check on Kevin.
The lines weren’t down. If local lines are non-functioning, all phone traffic is inoperative regardless if it’s long distance or not. Kevin also called for Pizza and the police himself.
And the mom/fam was able to call from overseas to local PD…
Yes, Ma Bell would prioritize getting the police phone lines working first
…and leave various messages with friends or neighbors to check on Kevin.
Family: they were all on the trip. Friends/neighbors: I don’t remember.
If local lines are non-functioning, all phone traffic is inoperative regardless if it’s long distance or not.
Back then it’d be easy to knock out long distance lines but keep the locals up; you just had to take down the right trunk. And in a city that big the trunks would have been split up into local and long distance.
While 911 as an emergency number in the US began in 1968, it wasn't universal until 1999. Home Alone came out in 1990. It was completely normal in my youth (earlier, yes, but still) to just not know what the number to call the police was.
Could, yes. In 1990, the standard was to call 411 if you needed to find a phone number. And that often cost money, so parents would drum into their kids not to call 411. "We have 411 at home. ::slams phone book on table::"
Which means they'd have had a phone book, and everyone knew where it was. Sometimes local police/fire/hospital emergency numbers were printed on the cover, or on the first page. If not, there'd be a place on the cover where you could write them in yourself. They'd also come with a refrigerator magnet sign that you could write in with marker later on.
I'm not saying any of this to be disagreeable; there are a zillion plot holes in that movie. Just reminiscing with some late 1980s "day in the life" nostalgia.
The 411 number has been in use since at least 1930[3] in New York City,[4] San Francisco,[5] and other large cities where panel and crossbar switching equipment installed by the Bell System was prevalent. However, in smaller Bell System cities as well as almost all areas served by GTE and other companies where step-by-step equipment was the norm such as Los Angeles,[6] 113 was used until at least the 1960s, and in some cases (the Pacific Northwest, for example) until the mid-1980s.
Naw man we gonna have a sprinkler fight on your lawn. Then play lawn darts and drink from the hose. Maybe play some bikes. I think I hear your mom calling you, you better go.
Well, he is a white kid in an affluent neighborhood (whole huge family affording vacation, large house), so he probably would have been treated better.
He thinks his family actually disappeared. He remarks that they couldn't have gone to Paris, because their cars are still in the garage. The garage having been left open is even a plot point, to allow Kevin to make this realization quicker.
He does eventually call the police. It's the last step of his plan. He calls them to his neighbor's house.
The movie is seriously bulletproof. Like how Kevin spills Pepsi on his ticket and we see it accidentally get thrown in the garbage the night before.
Fun story:
When my daughter met Santa Claus for the first time, she'd recently seen Home Alone and was obsessed, and she introduced herself as Kevin.
When it was time to take a picture I said, "Ok [daughter's name which in all fairness does have an "ev" sound in it], get in Santa's sleigh."
Then Santa leaned over and whispered, "Ohh. I thought she said her name was Kevin."
Remember when Macauley Culkin was in a pizza-based Velvet Underground cover band that played versions of their songs but made them about pizza? lol I think it was called The Pizza Underground.
I saw a picture of him recently and he's looking pretty healthy, which is good because he was in rough shape for a while there.
If we're gonna take shitposts seriously, then I'm also gonna inform you that I recently watched the movies, and a lot of the injuries depicted would be at least ER-worthy, with possible permanent crippling damage, and more than a few would easily kill a man. Especially in the second film.
There are also several YT videos with trauma surgeons and ER nurses rating the injuries sustained by Marv and Harry. Even the innocuous ones would leave them permanently scarred, most would cripple them for life, and a good couple of them would be instantly lethal.
Ah! Good old videos on ‘how realistic these films are’. I know at least three decent series of such vids, but forgot about them lately — need to get into them again, they provide nice mealtime entertainment.
I was going to say, he beans them in the head with bricks from a 3 or 4-story building in the second one, there's no way they get out of that without out, at best, shattered skulls and massive brain trauma. The paint cans and giant tool chest down the stairs in the first one could easily kill a man too.
So, you're saying someone(s) in his family orchestrated the "accident" of leaving him behind and taking a flight to escape his inevitable psychotic break?
The entire family was in on it. They spent exorbitant amounts of money trying to get away from him, three times, and he mercilessly tracked them down across the globe, casually dispatching away the hitmen they sent after him
I would watch this —especially if it were done today w/ Caulkin reprising his role. (and entirely ignoring the very existence of the recent "sequel", ofc)
But the part we always forget is that the robber was the “cop” that had come to the house the night before the trip.
So this kid was like the cops are so corrupt I have to deal with this on my own.
That's a really good point I never thought of.
Is it realistic that he didn't have any other friends / trusted adults in the community?
As a movie though the suspension of disbelief is pretty good. Phone lines are down, neighbors are on vacation too, ...
The McAllister's are rich as hell. All their friends are too. The whole neighborhood went on vacation except that one old guy.
Which is, again, another thing explained in the movie within the first 5 minutes.
Didn’t even think of that. You’re right.
and that's what we should all learn from him
Didn’t the storm knock the phone lines out? That’s why Moira didn’t call the house and called the cops to try and get them to do a wellness check.
Yes.
This movie is nearly bulletproof. John Hughes thought of every plausible hole and plugged it. He was a genius.
He calls and orders a pizza
Because later the lines get fixed.
Kevin also didn’t want his parents to get in trouble so he didn’t call the cops
Wasn't he under the impression his parents (and all of his family, really) had ceased to exist?
"I made my family disappear." 😈
No, he could not call the police. A tree fell on his phone line and disconnected his house.
And his parents did notify the police, but the police were, A: completely incredulous, B: completely incompetent and uninterested. They came and knocked on the door, but Kevin was still scared and confused and was hiding under his parents bed the whole time. The cop just gave up and left.
Source: I watched the movie again... and I am going to do so this year along with a Die Hard trilogy (I never watched the third movie) marathon.
Also one of the robbers scoped out the place disguised as a cop and already spooked him.
Die Hard With a Vengeance isn’t a Christmas movie but IMHO it’s the best of the series
Little early in the day for blasphemy isn't it?
Blas ph emy, blas for you, blas for everyone all around.
Blasphe-you, blasphe-me, poisonous pedagogy
Seriously. Die hard is also a seemless, perfect movie. 80s sleeze, hard boiled cynic cop who has a heart of gold, "ho ho ho now I have a machine gun?"
Aint nothing that followed it up kept up.
Kevin is a shop lifter after he panics with the tooth brush. Since he learned never to trust cops, he assumes he'd get thrown in jail like the hardened criminal he is... And then there's the cop who's trying to break into his house. Yeah, can't blame him for not making that call.
Yeah, the first movie pretty clearly lays out why he didn’t want to call the cops. Also, IIRC, the snow storm knocked out the phone lines. His parents mention that they can’t get ahold of him because the lines are down. So he couldn’t have called them even if he tried.
The second movie though? He was a predator stalking his prey. He wasn’t just a victim of a break-in. He actively lured them to his twisted funhouse, and didn’t call the cops until the very end when he wanted them to get caught red-handed.
He learned what he was good at... And what he enjoyed.
He has a particular set of skills.
The McAllisters are the family he gets sent to live with after the good son.
That movie is fucked
Also, ACAB.
Didn't he not trust the cops because Pesci pretended to be a cop in the opening scene, in order to case the house?
He didnt call the police because the phone lines are being worked on in one of the opening scenes before we even see the McCallisters and presumably are down.
His parents couldn't even call home to make sure he was okay.
Pretty sure only long distance lines were down. Local calls were still good which is how he ordered the Pizza.
There’s no difference between those lines at the local level. The only long distance lines would be the oceanic ones.
E: does nobody know how old lines worked? I can’t believe the number of people trying to force some twist to make their version work. The phone repair guy was right there on the residential street. If local lines were down, no in/out calls would work, yet Kevin ordered pizza and called the cops locally. It’s a huge leap to assume that this area would have had a side junction to separate international calls to a different system. Extremely unlikely, and that would probably be a feature reserved for businesses that needed to make such calls regularly. Old lines just weren’t run for international like that on analog runs for regular homes. His family were able to call friends and neighbors from overseas to see if they were home. So those lines weren’t down even if for some bizarre reason they were separate.
It’s just a plot hole. NBD. Enjoy the movie.
E2: digging around on the internet people have pointed out the plot hole. The only scenario where it would work is full of “ifs” that allow international calls in through a separate system, but nonetheless, it would basically only have to affect that one house getting perfectly hit to knock out international but not local by the tree branch yet nearby neighbors get calls on their answering machines from overseas.
I’m not pursuing this further, lol. It’s just entertainment. I’m not going to ruin the fun with over-analysis and bickering over “but if…”
I'm not sure that was true in 1990 in the United States. In the old analog networks, the central offices could route calls locally among phone numbers that shared the same central office, which was basically any number that had the same first 3 digits of the 7 digit number under the North American Numbering Plan. At least for the suburban neighborhood I grew up in, in the 80's, the neighborhood pizza places had the same central office code as my home phone number.
It wasn't until the rise of digital switching that the phone number itself got decoupled from the actual network topography, and things like number portability became possible. But in the analog systems they wanted to minimize switching where possible, so "local" calls weren't all equally local.
Right, and the family was in France.
And the mom/fam was able to call from overseas to local PD, and leave various messages with friends or neighbors to check on Kevin.
The lines weren’t down. If local lines are non-functioning, all phone traffic is inoperative regardless if it’s long distance or not. Kevin also called for Pizza and the police himself.
Let’s face it, the phone is a plot hole.
Yes, Ma Bell would prioritize getting the police phone lines working first
Family: they were all on the trip. Friends/neighbors: I don’t remember.
Back then it’d be easy to knock out long distance lines but keep the locals up; you just had to take down the right trunk. And in a city that big the trunks would have been split up into local and long distance.
That’s not how that works. There are no separate residential lines for police.
The rest, that’s not how that works, either.
Yeah I know that but he was able to leave. He went grocery shopping. Iirc the storm took out the lines just to his house, maybe the neighborhood.
"One call and he would've been safe"
By calling the cops? Lol, good joke.
CSP would be all over this. He'd be in foster care before his family got back.
"Safe"
*CPS
My bad, a bit frustrated...
It's alright, bro. Kevin's not real.
At least it's not SCP.
It's closer than you'd think.
His family is wealthy; different rules apply to him.
Nah, it's because he knows one fundamental truth: ACAB. Especially the sleezy one with the gold tooth.
All Clams Are Bivalves
Or he was just too afraid to contact the police. Remember, this took place in the USA, where people have reason to fear them.
He was white and from a wealthy family, he'd be fine.
His neighborhood was an upper-middle class family who were fucking loaded. Cops kiss up to the wealthy.
He did call the police
And the quality of the police work was documentary level realism for a Hollywood movie.
This is Kevin now. Feel.old yet?
HA1 was in Chicago. CPD is half as corrupt as NYPD
HA2 was in New York. NYPD is half as corrupt as LAPD.
LAPD is corruption incarnate.
Kevin had no other choice. besides he was staying in a hotel with a human trafficker and pedophile, things were already dangerous enough as it was.
He couldn't have phoned anyone! The phone line was out!
While 911 as an emergency number in the US began in 1968, it wasn't universal until 1999. Home Alone came out in 1990. It was completely normal in my youth (earlier, yes, but still) to just not know what the number to call the police was.
Could dial 0 to call the operator for directory assistance and be connected.
Could, yes. In 1990, the standard was to call 411 if you needed to find a phone number. And that often cost money, so parents would drum into their kids not to call 411. "We have 411 at home. ::slams phone book on table::"
Which means they'd have had a phone book, and everyone knew where it was. Sometimes local police/fire/hospital emergency numbers were printed on the cover, or on the first page. If not, there'd be a place on the cover where you could write them in yourself. They'd also come with a refrigerator magnet sign that you could write in with marker later on.
I'm not saying any of this to be disagreeable; there are a zillion plot holes in that movie. Just reminiscing with some late 1980s "day in the life" nostalgia.
Now get off my lawn.
The 411 on 411. From Wikipedia
The 411 number has been in use since at least 1930[3] in New York City,[4] San Francisco,[5] and other large cities where panel and crossbar switching equipment installed by the Bell System was prevalent. However, in smaller Bell System cities as well as almost all areas served by GTE and other companies where step-by-step equipment was the norm such as Los Angeles,[6] 113 was used until at least the 1960s, and in some cases (the Pacific Northwest, for example) until the mid-1980s.
Naw man we gonna have a sprinkler fight on your lawn. Then play lawn darts and drink from the hose. Maybe play some bikes. I think I hear your mom calling you, you better go.
just because it's fiction doesn't mean it's fantasy
And also he couldn't have called anyone, the phone line was out.
Well, he is a white kid in an affluent neighborhood (whole huge family affording vacation, large house), so he probably would have been treated better.
He thinks his family actually disappeared. He remarks that they couldn't have gone to Paris, because their cars are still in the garage. The garage having been left open is even a plot point, to allow Kevin to make this realization quicker.
He does eventually call the police. It's the last step of his plan. He calls them to his neighbor's house.
The movie is seriously bulletproof. Like how Kevin spills Pepsi on his ticket and we see it accidentally get thrown in the garbage the night before.
Fun story:
When my daughter met Santa Claus for the first time, she'd recently seen Home Alone and was obsessed, and she introduced herself as Kevin.
When it was time to take a picture I said, "Ok [daughter's name which in all fairness does have an "ev" sound in it], get in Santa's sleigh."
Then Santa leaned over and whispered, "Ohh. I thought she said her name was Kevin."
"Yeah, no, she did say Kevin."
Santa thought that was weird.
Leviathan is also a beautiful name.
deliberately props door open
Kevin was smart enough to know you don't call the police.
that guys middle name? Macaulay Culkin.
Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin is his name.
Macaulay Macaulay "Danger" Culkin Culkin
Remember when Macauley Culkin was in a pizza-based Velvet Underground cover band that played versions of their songs but made them about pizza? lol I think it was called The Pizza Underground.
I saw a picture of him recently and he's looking pretty healthy, which is good because he was in rough shape for a while there.
He knew the police would likely put him into child protective services due to parental negligence and decided he'd deal with that shit himself.
Nah, they were rich.
Are there actually kids who are that smart even when they are at that age? Dayum...
You need to be wiley to live in the USA.
If we're gonna take shitposts seriously, then I'm also gonna inform you that I recently watched the movies, and a lot of the injuries depicted would be at least ER-worthy, with possible permanent crippling damage, and more than a few would easily kill a man. Especially in the second film.
There are also several YT videos with trauma surgeons and ER nurses rating the injuries sustained by Marv and Harry. Even the innocuous ones would leave them permanently scarred, most would cripple them for life, and a good couple of them would be instantly lethal.
One of them got electrocuted to the point you could see his skeleton. Kevin was facing off against a couple of immortals.
Oooh, now there's a fun idea for a sequel/spin off.
Ah! Good old videos on ‘how realistic these films are’. I know at least three decent series of such vids, but forgot about them lately — need to get into them again, they provide nice mealtime entertainment.
I was going to say, he beans them in the head with bricks from a 3 or 4-story building in the second one, there's no way they get out of that without out, at best, shattered skulls and massive brain trauma. The paint cans and giant tool chest down the stairs in the first one could easily kill a man too.
Are you referencing the sound of a tool chest falling down the stairs or the bricks to the face?
also, don't call the cops unless you have literally no other options.
And he had plenty of other options.
America, Police, Safe. Hmmm.
Kevin: Hello officer, I was left alone at home.
Officer: Sure kid, let me call for someone to pick you up... Zed? The spider just caught a little fly.
Kevin went full ACAB.
So, you're saying someone(s) in his family orchestrated the "accident" of leaving him behind and taking a flight to escape his inevitable psychotic break?
That tracks.
The entire family was in on it. They spent exorbitant amounts of money trying to get away from him, three times, and he mercilessly tracked them down across the globe, casually dispatching away the hitmen they sent after him
I would watch this —especially if it were done today w/ Caulkin reprising his role. (and entirely ignoring the very existence of the recent "sequel", ofc)
Prepping for the Good Son movie role
The Good Son theory of Home Alone.
“You like The Wiggles? Their early music was a little too New Wave for my tastes…”
Every white suburban man’s wet dream.