The Home Alone Advent Calendar: Decking the Halls with Traps and Pitfalls

The Home Alone AAAAAdvent Calendar is a 25 Days of Christmas walk through young Kevin's battle against those bungling burglars...

...all done via a cardboard tree and tiny ornamental replicas of the film's more iconic moments, er, items and objects.

Last year, I celebrated Christmas with a Disney Princess Advent Calendar. This year, I decided to man-up by forgoing the gowns and crowns and focusing more on some boyish charm and climactic, slap-stick action. Hence, the Home Alone Advent Calendar, a 25-day journey through what many consider to be the best of the best Christmas films. Indeed, the film is an endlessly rewatchable classic. This calendar, however, might be more of a one-hit wonder.

Opening the book reveals a movie to be celebrated...and a pop-up tree ready to be decorated. Not to spoil much, but Day 1's prize, pulled from the appropriately numbered door, offers a replica of Kevin's crayon-scrawled battle plan for defending his homestead.

Decorating a Christmas Tree with the movie's many miscellaneous fixtures and agents? It's not a terrible idea--Kevin himself loves a tree decked in all the trimmings (as seen in both the film and its sequel)--but lacing a cardboard cutout of one with another 24 cardboard cutouts of almost random (and not particularly attractive) accoutrements is a tad counterintuitive. The product's cartoony aesthetic doesn't help, either, making everything feel as though it were pulled from a planned cartoon adaptation of the film wisely scrapped at the preliminary stages.

Spoiler alert! The finished tree looks like this, a cardboard conglomeration of an abomination. Of course, I could have more evenly distributed the ornaments by moving them around to the tree's backside. But just like a real Christmas Tree--why decorate what can't be seen?

So, yes, here's Kevin McCallister's janky jangle of a rockin' Christmas Tree, the epitome of what another Christmas classic hated: Wanton commercialization of the holiday. Charlie Brown would sigh "Good Grief" before trudging home, well, alone.

Question: Does the Home Alone Tree come closer to resembling Snoopy's crass, gaudy doghouse...or the elegant specimen of well-apportioned decor and prestige?

To be fair, this isn't an awful Advent Calendar...and at least it's one that can be used again and again. But, as a big fan of Home Alone myself, I can think of a superior version that might have used real memorabilia and trivia from the film--photos and production notes and quotes from all involved--versus dangling scrawls of feathers and desk fans and pizza boxes. Why not a genuine replica of Kevin's tossed away plane ticket? A photo, and quote, when the Old Man spots Kevin at his granddaughter's choir practice? Why not cousin Fuller guzzling a soda or a rubber tarantula from brother Buzz or a photo of Mom screaming "Kevin!"? Why not replicas of old merchandise, promotional tie-ins, and theatrical posters? Give me Gus Polinski, Polka King; the pizza boy and his lousy tip; the actors of the faux-motion picture marvel Angels with Filthy Souls.

More than a microscopic cardboard picture, give me trinkets or storyboards or insider glimpses into these magical artifacts, these memories many more would love to hold and know.

One can't expect miracles from a relatively inexpensive Advent box, but check out these press photos of John Candy and Catherine O'hara. Or, look at the recent pins released by Disney (many of which mirror the paper ornaments seen here). Who wouldn't prefer a pin over a chintzy "ornament?"

Alas, the Home Alone Advent Calendar is not quite a Christmas-wish fulfilled. It's too paper thin for fans and too narrow in scope for film buffs, pleasing only kids and the most casual of discount passerby's. As a desk-side trinket at the workplace, this could make for a decent conversation piece, but otherwise, more engaging and comprehensive calendars exist.

Buy one of those, in other words...even the ones with the chocolate have more nourishment than this limited cash-in.--D

The calendar does include a "Kevin's Guide" booklet that is filled with a lot of fluff about the film (namely the 25 ornamental items) along with some tangentially-related pranks to pull. Basically, it's a lot about nothing.