Home Alone

"Home Alone" / "Home Alone 2"
Macaulay Culkin was an incredibly cute child star. So cute that these two identical live-action cartoons were impossibly successful. They were not only box office smashes, but also cultural totems seen and loved again and again by parents and kids ... morealike. But sometimes 50 million Elvis fans can be wrong. For evidence, look no further than the nonstop mugging of the adorable little star, the sub-Three Stooges violence visited on Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern's hapless burglars, and the utterly shameless mother-and-child-reunion tear jerk at the end. You can't blame the star; he was just a kid doing what he was good at. Writer/producer John Hughes (who is capable of much better) and director Chris Columbus (who, sadly, isn't) are the culprits here. (PS: Two further Culkin-less sequels were made, and, yes, they were even worse, but why keep drilling when you've already struck oil?) (20th Century Fox)