HOME ALONE 3
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1997 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ** 1/2
When the stars of a movie series are dropped from the latest installment, one has to wonder whether the concept can survive. Could ALIEN: RESURRECTION have been successful if science and creative script writing could not have brought Sigourney Weaver back from the dead? Could you imagine a DIE HARD series without America's favorite everyman, macho hero, Bruce Willis? And could anyone but Harrison Ford play Indiana Jones or Jack Ryan? (Okay, okay, so Alec Baldwin was actually the first Jack Ryan.)
Not only is HOME ALONE's star, Macaulay Culkin, missing from the latest episode, HOME ALONE 3, but so are the original parents (Catherine O'Hara and John Heard) and the villains (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern). The common thread between the three HOME ALONE films is the prolific writer and producer John Hughes of FLUBBER, FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF, and numerous other kids' movies. There is only one other common element. The handsome cinematography on all three HOME ALONE movies comes from the lens of the talented Julio Macat.
HOME ALONE 3 is tailor-made for younger audiences that find comic mayhem so funny. With cute Alex D. Linz, who was so sweet last Christmas in ONE FINE DAY, playing the lead, Alex Pruitt, it is easy for the kids to identify with the show's hero. (One minor quibble. The boys we took talked during the show only once when Alex claimed to be 8, which is about their ages. "He's not 8," they said. I am not sure of the actor's age, but he does seem younger which probably adds to the breadth of the demographics of the kids for whom the show will appeal.)
The story starts in Hong Kong and then shifts to "Silicon Valley, Ca," where my family and I live. We get to see a non-existent Silicon Valley river and a large complex with high-tech security worthy of the CIA. Although not at all like the real McCoy, it is still an impressive piece of real estate. From there spies, played by Rya Kihlstedt, Olek Krupa, David Thornton and Lenny von Dohlen, steal a single military chip so powerful that the entire Southeast Asian region can be controlled with it. They hide the chip in a remote control car which -- you guessed it -- ends up by mistake with little Alex.
Alex lives in a lovely, snow encrusted Chicago suburb, in which every house is a Tudor mansion. The spies come to his placid enclave to retrieve their pilfered goods.
A wise-beyond-his-years Alex, playing a character with shades of his one from ONE FINE DAY, can quote the "Family Leave Act" to his hard working mother, played by Haviland Morris. Neither parent has a traditional 9-to-5 job and both spend a lot of time with him, which is good. On the other hand, they see no problem in leaving him at home alone, which isn't. As his mother explains, he has her Fax number, beeper number and office phone number, and she will stay in touch with him every half-hour via Email.
Adorable Alex has a smile that dazzles the audience with its innocence but with just the right touch of hidden devilishness. The crooks are no match for him with his telescope and his wide variety of homemade and ingenious gadgets.
"I guess you have to be 35 before anyone around here pays any attention to you," Alex tells the town's chief of police after Alex's second "false alarm" reporting a burglar. Since no one else will believe him, he decides to booby trap his own house to thwart the bad guys. The last half of the story deals with the damage his contraptions inflict upon them and the house.
Several of his techniques are quite funny with the best involving a video camera atop the remote control car that houses the infamous stolen chip. As the car blasts through the neighborhood hedges, the spies follow in hot pursuit. As funny as some of the scenes are, their repetition will probably begin to drive most adults a bit crazy. For their intended audience, they are just what is needed to keep the youngsters in stitches. Plus, there's also a smart-aleck and quite loquacious parrot and an adorable white rat.
"Little boys do have good imaginations, don't they?" says spy Alice Ribbons (Kihlstedt). True, but the film itself needed more imagination and less repetition if it wanted to involve the adults in the audience.
HOME ALONE 3 runs 1:38. It is rated PG cartoonish violence and a few mild expletives. The movie would be fine for all ages.
My son Jeffrey, age 8, said he gave the movie a 10 out of 10, and "if you think you've seen everything, you ain't seen nothing yet." His friend Matthew, age 9, said that he thought the film was suspenseful, exciting, and "double-or-nothing cool." His other friend Noveed, also 9, said it was a good story, but that he didn't like the movie too much because the parts with all the booby traps grossed him out.
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