The Great Holiday Debate

There are two movies very closely associated with the Christmas holiday: Home Alone and The Polar Express. Believe me, they are two great holiday movies, but which movie really shows the spirit of Christmas?  

Home Alone is a humorous holiday movie that follows 8 year-old  Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Caulkin) as he battles two crooks when they try to steal from his house on Christmas. The set – Kevin’s house – and the cast really make the movie family friendly. Home Alone greatly expresses an 8 year old’s imagination in a problematic situation and his actions – like the feather coat, the tarantula, the shovel to the face, and even mores. The human suffering  of the two crooks makes the film the best of the best. 

The unique aspect of Home Alone is that it never focuses on one side of the story as it is able to perfectly swap from the boy battling two house burglars to the parents desperately trying to get home to get to their son. The desperation really shows how caring the family is for Kevin. My overall rating for this movie would be a 4 out of 5 stars.

The Polar Express is a beautiful animated movie showing many kids during Christmas Eve take a mysterious train to the North Pole to see the fat man himself, Santa. It mainly focuses on one kid who lost belief in Santa and believed he didn’t exist until many unique characters came to help his beliefs like the conductor, the old man on top of the train, the kids and many more wacky people. The animation style of the movie is outstanding and looks so real but unreal at the same time and it’s definitely way beyond its time.  The way they animated the ticket flowing through the wind was amazing. The journey it had with the pack of wolves running and howling at the train and how it rolled up into a giant snowball breaking the light snow into the light pole spreading through the air bringing the ticket back to the train just gave me chills. 

The voice acting is really good, Eddie Deezen made the know-it-all kid sound like an actual know it all kid with the fast speaking, high pitch voice, and the vast knowledge for things that kids shouldn’t be knowing at their age. My rating for this movie overall is 5 out of 5 stars.