Summary
- The way Kevin orders pizza in Home Alone is considered the biggest plot hole in the movie.
- The more years that pass since the premiere, the more viewers think it is a major discrepancy.
- In fact, there is a perfectly logical explanation for the plot twist that is only apparent to those who lived in the 1990s.
As we get older, we look at holiday classics like Home Alone from a new, more mature perspective. We can't help but wonder how the McCallisters got their luxurious house, whether the burglars would actually survive Kevin's traps, and how the protagonist ordered pizza when the entire synopsis of the movie was built around Kevin's parents not being able to call their son.
If the first two questions are open to speculation, the third seems like a huge plot hole. But is it really?
The Phone Issue
The thing that bothers many Home Alone viewers is that the movie puts a lot of emphasis on the scene of a severe storm that causes a power outage that resets the McCallisters' alarm clocks to midnight, making the family late for the airport and forgetting about Kevin.
The storm also causes a tree branch to fall, knocking out the phone lines, which, according to a repairman, will be down for a few days. This is confirmed when the parents are unable to call Kevin when they discover his absence in Paris. However, a few scenes later we see the protagonist calling Little Nero's to order his very own cheese pizza.
While this leads to one of the best scenes with Angels With Filthy Souls and the delivery boy, it also looks like a major discrepancy that takes away from the movie's plausibility.
But as it turns out, if you question this story, you are simply too young to understand it.
The Explanation
There is a perfectly logical technical explanation that has its roots in the way the phone system worked in major American cities in the 1990s, when the movie was produced.
Long-distance and local calls were made over separate, independent lines. So when the tree damage in the movie knocked out the main trunk line to the entire city, the local lines most likely remained intact.
If something like that happened in real life, it would have the results we see in Home Alone. While international calls wouldn't be able to get through, calling the local pizzeria would work.
This is certainly a difficult concept to grasp if you were born in the 21st century. Technology is evolving rapidly, which makes it difficult for filmmakers to find plausible explanations for some of their plot twists.
In the modern world, the creators would have to think twice as hard to explain why Kevin's parents didn't just call his cell phone.