MOVIE REVIEW: HOME ALONE 3 (1997)

The original Home Alone was an instant classic. The follow-up, Lost in New York, was just an average re-hash of the first film but in a new setting. Given the cooler reception of the second installment among critics and audiences, there were plenty of good reasons not to make another Home Alone movie. Too bad for us that Hollywood doesn’t stop trying to replicate existing IP success until an inferior sequel comes along that both loses money and it threatens to tarnish the reputation of the series brand itself.

The series moves on from the McCallister family but stays in the Chicago suburbs with the Pruitt family. The youngest child, Alex, is down and out with the chicken pox. With his father out of town on business and his mother busy with work, Alex is left home alone during the daytime for a few days. Little does anyone know that his new remote-controlled car contains a stolen military microchip. As a quartet of international criminals narrows their search for the chip, Alex must defend himself and his home.

After his childhood success turned his life upside-down and into tabloid fodder, Macaulay Culkin wanted a break from Hollywood and said no to coming back for a third Home Alone movie. This was a smart move, because this third film feels very formulaic. While a third installment starring a then-teenaged Culkin would have been questionable, his presence is missed. While I am cautious to criticize a child actor, Alex Linz is just too ordinary, and he lacks the personality and charisma that made Culkin such a charmer on the big screen.

On the antagonists’ side of the coin, four bad guys are too many. While this spreads out the carnage inflicted by the many traps Alex sets up around and within his house, the notion that one little boy could outwit and evade four grown adults (international criminals, mind you) breaks my ability to suspend disbelief. Sure, it was a stretch to think that two bumbling adults could be thwarted by a kid in the first two movies, but dimwits don’t become international criminals working for foreign governments. The bad guys here would just storm the house and dispatch anyone that gets in their way in the most efficient manner.

Returning the setting to the protagonist’s house, while derivative of the first film, actually works in Home Alone 3’s favor. After having Kevin McCallister wandering around in New York City, there’s not much more room for a grander spectacle in the third installment without further breaking suspension of disbelief. That being said, the filmmakers can’t prevent the audience from comparing this film to the original. On top of the aforementioned issues, the booby traps in this film are more complicated or extreme. Many of the most dangerous ones here require almost superhuman villains in order for them to get up from and soldier on. That they are played off for the most superficial laughs is disappointing.

Somehow this film had the largest budget of the first three Home Alone films. It certainly doesn’t look like it. For all that money spent, we got no McCallisters, a different director and composer, the same formula, but far worse results. It’s just not Home Alone without Macaulay Culkin, and audiences let the studio know this in no uncertain terms when it failed to make back its budget at the domestic box office. For a while, the only reason anyone had to watch this forgettable and regrettable sequel was sheer curiosity about how bad this at-one-time series-killing dud could be. It’s not bad, but being dull is, perhaps, a worse fate.

FINAL RATING: 2 out of 5