HOME ALONE  4.0***

     The overwhelming success of 'Home Alone' (it spawned two sequels), is enough to guarantee that most people will love this story of a family that departs for Paris during the Christmas holidays, mistakenly leaving an eight-year old boy to fend for himself. And fend he does when burglars threaten to break in unless he can rig enough booby-traps to keep them out.

That's the simple plot in a nutshell. Macaulay Culkin seems to have no problem carrying most of the film with a wide variety of looks, gestures and expressions--but for my money it's Daniel Stern and Joe Pesci who get the main laughs as the bumbling burglars intent on outwitting the kid's traps.

Others in the cast don't have as much to do but do well enough by their roles, particularly Catherine O'Hara and John Heard as the parents who only discover on the plane that Kevin is missing. The laughs are steady, the color photography is great and the  story is probably every boy's fantasy of what it might be like to be left home alone. Add to that the holiday flavor of Christmas and an endearing musical score by John Williams and you have the makings of a classic.