The Physics of Home Alone --Term Paper

            It’s a few short days away from Christmas, and the house is filled with the excited packing of the McCallister family. With uncles, aunts, cousins, brothers, and sisters all preparing for the holiday trip to Paris, little Kevin feels invisible and unwanted. Every which way he turns he is redirected, picked on, or ignored. When he sees his cousin doing the one thing to ensure he will wet the bed they have to share and his brother pretending to throw up on his plate, Kevin finally loses his temper and causes a huge mess in the kitchen, leading to his punishment of sleeping alone in the attic. Believing that everyone hates him he angrily tells his mother that he wished he never had a family. The following morning the family leaves in a desperate attempt to catch their flight, unaware that they have left someone behind. Kevin wakes up to find his wish has been granted, which seems fun at first, until he discovers that two burglars are lurking around hoping to get inside and loot the place. In the movie Home Alone, it’s up to Kevin to protect his house from the men who call themselves the Wet Bandits. This is a fun film intended for families and children of all ages. To make the film entertaining to such an audience without traumatizing younger kids, certain aspects of the movie are played up and down. This causes a distortion in the laws of physics. Assuming this movie is based on our physical plane, the rules are often broken for the sake of entertainment. I will discuss the incorrect parabolic arcs of falling action, the speed exaggeration in certain scenes, and how the injuries the bad guys sustain are not realistic.

            Throughout the movie, the parabolic arcs that would normally occur in falling action are pushed past their limits. The first example of this occurs when Kevin attempts to slide from the second floor, down the stairs, and out the front door onto the sidewalk. Ignoring the fact that the friction of the carpet versus the angle at which he slides down the stairs would keep him from making it farther than a few feet, and even ignoring the fact that his sliding angle would have stopped the sled at the bottom step, the arc from which he slides off the front porch is inaccurate. Somehow, he mysteriously gets air from a flat plane that was exerting no extra force on the sled, which reaches the peak of the arc in two seconds, and then takes four seconds to reach the same point at which it had lifted. If he had been following the laws of physics, and it took him two seconds to reach the top of the arc, it would have taken him another two seconds to return to the same height on falling side of the arc, not double that time. The second example is actually a series, because they break the rule in the same way. There are several instances when the bad guys fall off of the stairs, both inside and out. For instance, when Harry, the shorter villain, slips on the iced steps outside, he doesn’t just fall backwards, but seems to float away from the step, which doesn’t exert enough force to send him flying so high. As with the example of Kevin and the sled, his arc on the rise doesn’t last as long as his falling arc. He looks more like he is being pulled by a wire than being affected by gravity. This can be seen again when Marv falls down the stairs after being hit in the head by a paint can. By slowing down the movie, one can actually see that as soon as he is hit he does not fall down and back but actually rises from the step. He then proceeds to fall further than he would under normal conditions. Where he would have fallen sprawled on the stairs, he manages to land completely flat on the first floor. One last example of incorrect arcs, because it is simply too good to miss. When the bandits try to follow Kevin out the window along a rope, they get half way across when Kevin cuts it. In the movie the bad guys hold onto the rope as it swings back towards the house and hit the wall hard before falling to the ground. This would be physically impossible. The distance between the house and the tree the rope was tied to is so great that, had the villains indeed been halfway across when the rope was cut, they would have hit the ground long before the rope would ever reach the house.

           

            By far the most unrealistic aspect of this movie is of course the physical damage. Most people going through even one or two of these incidents would be down for the count, not springing back to their feet for more. Within the body are physical limits, which the two villains succeed in surpassing. For instance, when Harry puts his hand on the heated doorknob, he rushes to cool it in the snow, but we later see him using this hand to support his entire body weight as he climbs across a rope. The stinging sensation of a recent burn would have been too much and he would have fallen off of the rope very early on. Even before this however, when he slips down the stairs he performs what I affectionately call the kill shot. After making it up the stairs, he slips again and revolves to land squarely on his neck, his body weight crunching down on his spine in its most vulnerable place. Looking shocked but otherwise unharmed, he proceeds to climb steps again to burn his hand. He will later have his head set on fire for six seconds and come back with only burned hair, when third degree burns would be more accurate. If that weren’t enough Harry takes three more falls, once from slipping and another from being hit with a paint can, including his fall from the rope. He also gets hit by his partner at full force by a crowbar, an action that would crack a few ribs. It seems strange that after all that, he is bested by a shovel to the back of the head. His partner also sustains more damage than would be physically possible to get back up from. Marv falls down the stairs to the basement, which should leave him feeling sore all over, but continues on to get hit in the head with an iron, plant a nail an inch into his foot combined soon after with broken ornaments, also take three more falls with his partner, and does not pass out until he too is hit with a shovel. After so much abuse the villains are driven away, not in an ambulance, but a standard police car.

            Had the bandits exhibited accurate reactions to all the abuse they suffered, this movie would not be deemed suitable for family audiences. The rules of physics are broken to make the film entertaining. The falling arcs are off, the speed is exaggerated, and the villains get up and come back for ever more, at least for as long as the script says. The great comedy of the film is that it boarders on the ridiculous, that because these things are not physically possible, they are funny to watch.