HOME ALONE 3 (20th Century Fox) Starring: Alex D. Linz, Olek Krupa, Rya Kihlstedt, David Thornton, Lenny Von Dohlen. Screenplay: John Hughes. Producers: John Hughes and Hilton Green. Director: Raja Gosnell. MPAA Rating: PG (mild profanity, cartoon violence) Running Time: 99 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
The obvious question associated with the creation of HOME ALONE 3 is "why," though not for the obvious reasons. You'd certainly expect a third installment from a series where the first two racked up a collective $457 million, even if the star of those two films has been spending more time lately in court than on screen. It's just that HOME ALONE guru John Hughes has been doing a perfectly serviceable job of re-cycling that successful formula without using the HOME ALONE name. BABY'S DAY OUT, 101 DALMATIANS and FLUBBER have managed to turn pratfalls, scatology and groin injuries into cash without conjuring up the yelping visage of Macaulay Culkin. Why start now?
Why indeed, especially if you're going to fumble the formula the way HOME ALONE 3 does. The required elements appear to be in place -- a youngster (Alex D. Linz as Alex Pruitt), absentee parents, a snow-covered Midwestern suburb, nefarious intruders, several severe bodily injuries and property damage in the six-figure range -- but everything feels just slightly askew. The little boy, rather than being a mischievous imp, is a minor scientific genius and all-around upstanding citizen. Goofy antagonists Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern have been replaced by Olek Krupa, Rya Kihlstedt, Lenny Von Dohlen and David Thornton as international criminals looking for a stolen missile guidance chip in Alex's possession, characters a bit too chilly and sinister to be fun. And the direction by Raja Gosnell, taking over for Chris Columbus, drags the pace so badly during the first hour that kids may be snoring long before they chuckle for the first time.
Now, no one has ever accused me of championing John Hughes' modus operandi in the 90s, when he lost all interest in films for viewers over the age of 10. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's one of the Biblical signs of the end-times. But let's face it -- the formula works. Hughes has made the live-action Warner Bros. cartoon his personal dominion; HOME ALONE is basically a Road Runner/Coyote adventure where the Road Runner has finally gotten his hands on the Acme catalog. HOME ALONE 3 includes all of Hughes' most annoying habits -- cloying sentimentality, utter disdain for adults, crotch-level comedy -- with little of the mitigating frivolousness. The Road Runner turns into a Rhodes scholar, Wile E. Coyote into a James Bond villain, and the trip-hammer pacing something more suited to Merchant Ivory than Chuck Jones.
Of course, I can't recall a Merchant Ivory film which included so many different things dropped on people's heads. The villains in HOME ALONE 3 are brained from above with books, barbells, decorative flower pots, a lawn mower, lumber and human excrement, among other things, which Nick Glennie-Smith's relentlessly whimsical score reminds us is jolly good fun. Certainly all the mayhem will keep the kids giggling, assuming you rouse them from their naps, but there are so many different ways to see exactly the same material with more energy and at significantly less cost. John Hughes has done himself in by turning out a HOME ALONE 3 which can't keep up with HOME ALONE, HOME ALONE 2, or the dozen other de facto sequels which didn't happen to bear the HOME ALONE name.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 broken homes: 3.
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