My Movie Review on Home Alone 3 · 5:42pm Jul 1st, 2020
Yo, what's up, Kemosabes?
This is your friendly film, TV show, and episode reporter here with another review.
Today, for the first installment of this year's "Christmas in July" series, I'm gonna give you guys my take of "Home Alone 3".
Here's the summary of it:
When 8 year old Alex Pruitt comes down with the chicken pox, he's forced to stay home by himself while his parents attend work and his siblings go to school.
However, when a quartet of internationally wanted criminals named Peter Beaupre, Alice Ribbons, Burton Jernigan, and Earl Unger arrive in Alex's neighborhood in search of a missile-cloaking computer chip that they lost while it was hidden in a remote control car, Alex must take matters into his own hands to protect the chip and his neighborhood.
Will Alex manage to stop the thugs and foil their plans? Or will they manage to get what they want?
In all honesty, I remember seeing this film on two separate occasions. I don't remember the specific times, but I do recall that the first time I saw it was when it was playing on Disney Channel, and the second time I saw it was when my eldest sister gave me a DVD copy of it and the fourth film out of lack of interest in keeping them. Whether she's actually seen the two movies or not I don't know. But hey, it worked to my advantage because I didn't have to look for them on the internet or rent them.
After seeing this film again recently in order to review it...well, let's just say that this isn't my favorite movie and I can see why it's not the talk of the town.
Much of the reason for why I'm not too fond of this movie came from the script by John Hughes and direction by Raja Gosnell, despite both of them previously working on the previous two films as writer and film editor. They were at least able to carry some spark, but Hughes and Gosnell weren't able to carry the film into being something entirely worthwhile.
One spark that I was able to pinpoint was that there were a lot of fun jokes that were genuinely funny, especially the slapstick humor. Plus, there were some nostalgic moments that were surprisingly well-done, and the dialogue throughout the film was clever.
However, outside of the slapstick, there were many jokes that seemed to fall kind of flat and weren't of the most innocent quality. And, despite Gosnell and Hughes's attempts, the film seemed to have little heart and emotion, with much of it feeling forced. Even the bonds of the characters did nothing to make the feature compelling, developing or otherwise.
There were elements of the story that I couldn't help but feel unhappy with too. For instance, I didn't get how Peter would know that the chip was going to Chicago at the beginning or how Alice could know it was a kid that had been calling the cops, and the moments with Alice trapping Mrs. Hess were rather...creepy.
The replacing of the old characters with entirely new ones, especially Kevin and his family, left a rather hollow impression. They were intriguing, of course. But, the whole move unfortunately caused the film to be all-the-more questionable on why it would need to exist in the first place. With the exception of Alex and the crooks, the character development in articulation wasn't compelling, strong, or exceptional. As a matter of fact, the sudden bonding between Alex and Mrs. Hess near the end was so sudden and out of place I wondered why that couldn't be done earlier in the movie.
A big highlight, though, is that the performances of the cast were nicely done. The performers not only took on their parts with significant professionalism, but they made any moment they were given something fun. The only exceptions were the interactions between Alex and his siblings before the end, which felt kind of mean in terms of sibling dynamic.
Alex Pruitt may not have been an original successor to Kevin McCallister, but Alex D. Linz did do a good job at making the character his own. I'd also like to add that Olek Krupa, Rya Kihlstedt, Lenny Von Dohlen, and David Thornton were the best of the movie's supporting players, making their characters of Peter Beaupre, Alice Ribbons, Burton Jernigan, and Earl Unger an intimidating force to be reckoned with and taking on the slapstick moments with gusto.
In the end, "Home Alone 3" isn't without top-notch performances and slapstick humor, but it's not something that I'd recommend watching or seeing more than once. Or at all for that matter. To put it bluntly, it's Raja Gosnell's first attempt as director in a long line of mediocre films.
So, I rate "Home Alone 3" 3½ out of 5 stars.
Stay tuned for my review of "Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House" coming tomorrow.
In my opinion, Home Alone 3 is far from perfect, but it's still a fun movie with funny traps.
I liked the movie, but compared to the first two, not so much