@Memento don't get me started on Kevin's family. The mother forgetting him twice, Uncle Frank, the brother...
And just because you don't like a character it doesn't mean you have to hate the movie. You liked Charlie and the Chocolate factory despite Grandpa Joe being the laziest shit alive, right?
Kevin's family are assholes as well, true. And in order for me to like a movie, it has to have interesting, compelling characters. I don't hate Home Alone as much as I do A Christmas Story (and while I loved Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka, I despised the kids. I hated Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; don't remind me of that horrible shit.), but it's not my favorite movie.
The reason why I hate A Christmas Story is because I was forced to watch it in middle school English class every - fucking - year, and if I refused, the teacher suspended me.
The taller kid abused Ralphie just as much as the shorter kid. "Cry Baby Cry" - that's abuse if I ever heard it
He wanted a BB Gun to be like his hero in the movies/tv show - can't remember. I do not absolve him of shooting helpless animals with it but that was not his intention of getting the gun. He was just trying it out. But a kid will do what they do. I know of kids that shot helpless animals with BB guns when I was a kid and I do not believe they turned out to be serial killers. Now torturing animals is definitely on your way to being a serial killer. Ralphie did not have any intent on torturing an animal. And I bet if his mom saw him shooting animals, she would have told him how bad it was and I bet he would have stopped.
I will grant that saying he is blind is bad. He went too far on that point.
As to the lying and getting his friend in trouble, I will have to go back and watch that scene.
Fine, the taller kid was abusive, but not nearly as much as the shorter kid. And the taller kid got the worst of the encounter.
And who says Ralphie would've stopped? He's already proven to be manipulative and narcissistic; why would his mother telling him off for shooting innocent animals stop him? And I understand shooting helpless animals with a BB gun doesn't necessarily mean they'll turn out to be serial killers, but Ralphie took it to a whole new level.
He lied about learning the "f" word from his friend when he really learned it from his dad. His friend got horribly beat by his own mother for no good reason; Ralphie's mother, who was on the line was
horrified at the sheer abuse his friend got, and the poor boy was
screaming. And after that, Ralphie had a narcissistic fantasy about being him being blind and having everyone feel sorry for him. Never mind that
he got his friend into trouble, never mind that his friend got worse than he did; it was all about his ego.
Really?? He was home alone and in New York alone. Those two thieves deserved everything they got.
If they did not go after Kevin, he would have left them alone.
I think the lawyer at Brown and Croupen explained it best (look up Brown and Croupen's take on Home Alone. Kevin shoplifted, used his own BB gun to shoot people, tricked a poor pizza delivery guy into dropping his pizza - that Kevin didn't pay for, mind you, which is theft - by rigging a television show to threaten to shoot him, and did horrifically-torturous traps for the Wet Bandits. Seriously, nails on the steps? Blowtorching people's heads? Glass Christmas ornaments on the floor? Many other potentially fatal traps? That goes
way beyond the pale of self-defense. They weren't even going to kill the kid until he did all of those horrible traps to hurt them.
Kevin is a product of his parents and his siblings, true, but the kid's sheer depravity in his traps for the bandits, his lack of respect for the law (because he ran from the police officer after he shoplifted), and doing similar things in the next few movies about him proves that Kevin is a fucking psychopath.
He could've easily called the police for the Wet Bandits. Easily could've called the police to claim that he was home alone, that his parents forgot him, so that he could go to a safe place for a while back. Why didn't he? Because he was already breaking the law, relished being home alone, wanted to use his traps. He had all the time in the world to call the police on the Wet Bandits. He did not.