Home Alone" meets "The Terminal" meets "The Breakfast Club" in "Unaccompanied Minors," a hyper sugar rush of a yuletide-themed frolic about a group of unsupervised kids who run wild in an airport on Christmas Eve after a major blizzard has shut it down.

While the premise originates from more modest beginnings -- the concept sprung from a story broadcast on Chicago Public Radio's "This American Life" -- by the time director Paul Feig ("Freaks and Geeks") and screenwriters Jacob Meszaros and Mya Stark were done, it hit the screen as a frantic free-for-all.

Those amped-up results should no doubt address any ADD concerns among its pretween viewers, but a little charm and inventiveness would have gone a long way to tone down some of the picture's more obnoxious impulses.

Given the shortage of family comedies in the marketplace, "Minors" should still generate some minor holiday cheer for Warner Bros. Pictures -- but probably nothing to write home about.
Among those wrecking havoc down the corridors of a big-city airport are Spencer (Dyllan Christopher), the makeshift posse's de facto leader; his little sister, Katherine (Dominique Saldana); precocious Charlie (Tyler James Williams); pampered rich girl Grace (Gina Mantegna); tomboy Donna (Quinn Shephard); and comic book geek "Beef" ("Bad Santa" scene-stealer Brett Kelly).

Hot on their collective tail, meanwhile, is the airport's blustery Scrooge of a passenger-relations manager (Lewis Black) and his reluctant lackey (Wilmer Valderrama).

Before the snow clears, the kids have ricocheted down a maze of automated baggage chutes, ripped through a mountain of unclaimed bags and tried canoe-luging down steep and icy hills, only slowing down for some obligatory but ringingly artificial heart moments that have arrived so late in the game that it's hard to embrace the warmth and fuzziness of it all.

There's definitely something quite workable at the core of "Minors," but Feig's broad, frenzied attack -- Black sets the aggressively over-the-top tenor followed by many of the adult performers -- gives one an even deeper appreciation for the comparative subtleties of those holiday-themed movies penned by John Hughes, like the first two "Home Alone" installments and "Christmas Vacation."

Still it's nice to see an uncredited Teri Garr, albeit briefly, as a very-much-in-the-Christmas-spirit friend of Spencer's mom (Paget Brewster), while Kids in the Hall (Bruce McCullough, Mark McKinney and Kevin MacDonald) pop up as a trio of inept security guards.

The cacophonous pitch is further boosted by composer Michael Andrews' caffeinated Looney Tunes score and a selection of reworked, hopped-up holiday standards.