Kevin was smart enough to know you don’t call the police.
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.
Didn’t even think of that. You’re right.
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.
and that’s what we should all learn from him
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.
also, don’t call the cops unless you have literally no other options.
And he had plenty of other options.
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.
deleted by creator
Prepping for the Good Son movie role
one call [to the police] and he would have been safe
just because it’s fiction doesn’t mean it’s fantasy
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.
And also he couldn’t have called anyone, the phone line was out.
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.
The Good Son theory of Home Alone.
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.
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.
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.
Also one of the robbers scoped out the place disguised as a cop and already spooked him.
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.
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.
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.
Nah, they were rich.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That’s not how that works. There are no separate residential lines for police.
The rest, that’s not how that works, either.
Kevin went full ACAB.
He did call the police
And the quality of the police work was documentary level realism for a Hollywood movie.
