Too Little, Too Late: Kevin McCallister's Mom Finally Decided To Show Up And Be A Mom
EW - "Kevin!" Catherine O'Hara reunited with herHome Alone son Macaulay Culkin at his Hollywood Walk of Fame star ceremony on Friday, where she delivered a speech that reduced her former costar to tears.
The Schitt's Creek star, 69, reflected on watching her onscreen son, 43, grow and evolve in the years since they played Kate and Kevin McCallister in Chris Columbus and John Hughes' 1990 Christmas classic and its 1992 sequel. "Home Alone was, is, and always will be a beloved global sensation," O'Hara began her speech. "The reason families all over the world can't let a year go by without watching and loving Home Alone together is because of Macaulay Culkin."
Yes, Culkin had the "most excellent script" and "wonderful director," but it was his "perfect performance" that has made it such an enduring classic, O'Hara continued. "I know you worked really hard, but you made acting look like the most natural thing in the world to do." She later added, "This beautiful 10-year-old little boy was called a superstar, a moneymaker, one of the hottest leading young men in Hollywood. How does anyone survive that?"
O'Hara concluded her speech by thanking Culkin for including her, "your fake mom that left you home alone not once but twice," to "share in this happy occasion." After sharing a hug, Culkin wiped away tears.
Well, well, well. Look who finally decided to stop being a deadbeat mother. Most of the times in life I believe in forgiving, forgetting, and deading grudges... Not in this case of Kate and Kevin McCallister.
I've alluded to it plenty of times before in my annual Mother's Day blog post honoring the worst mother's in movie and tv history - but Kate/Katherine was just a flat-out, totally incompetent mother all the way around. How all of her kids weren't taken away from her after leaving her child for the second time while going on vacation remains one of the world's great mysteries and great failures of the American justice system.
She not only manifested her son being abandoned at home all by himself while her and her white-collar criminal husband took their 50 other kids to France for Christmas- telling him he should ask Santa for another family after unjustly punishing him, after he was publicly humiliated by his dirtbag uncle in front of the entire family
But she also couldn't even manage to get him to safety when she did realize she left him home. If it wasn't for the Polka King Gus Polinski, she may have still be stuck at the airport trying to beg and barter to get back to Chicago.
For her to have the balls to finally show up and be front and center, now, when the cameras are out, and hog the mic for herself, is just classic Kate Macallister.
To steal a great line about stealing lines from a great film (American History X) "Someone else has already said it best. So if you can't top it, steal from them and go out strong". And nobody has directed what a failure of a mother, Kate McAllister was, better than KFC, Chaps, and Clem all did.
But real talk, this is awesome for Macaulay Culkin. Poor guy went through some shit and has every reason in the world to be the poster boy of childhood star fuck ups but he's battled his demons and is a happily married family man now. And this Hollywood star recognition was well deserved.