Review of Home Alone 3 (1997) by Ian E — 21 Sep 2013

As I was disappointed with Home Alone 1 and 2, I remembered as a kid that I always found Home Alone 3 to be the absolute coolest, so I figured it was worth taking a shot, and that I really had nothing to lose, even though it doesn't feature Macaulay Culkin.

That was too much to expect.

Of course, the script is a pathetic attempt to make Home Alone 3 seem like a story that comes from the perspective of a child haunted by an entire world against him, when in actual fact it proves to be a cheap and repetitive rehash of its predecessors with the change being that it revolves around a remote control car and that Alex D. Linz helms the lead role. He does it well enough, but the script he's stuck with is poor and he is no Macaulay Culkin. He does manage to keep things mostly alive though, so he's certainly successful.

But the story dissolves from what it once was into some childish fantasy about taking on criminals with a remote control car, and although that entertained me as a kid and may still entertain child viewers, for the rest of the population it's a challenge to please.

The worst parts of the script are the lines given to Seth Smith and Scarlet Johansson, who serving as the older brother and sister to Alex Pruitt respectively have to intimidate him, but do it with cheap and pathetic lines and poor direction from Raja Gosnell. Perhaps Seth Smith is part to blame, but there is no way Scarlet Johansson can be because today she is one of the most talented female actresses around, but why she had to start of with sub-par material of this quality isn't good for her.

Essentially, the dynamics are uncreative and repetitive, failing to please fans outside of juveniles, and there is no real creativity or originality to it save from the efforts of Alex D. Linz to make Home Alone 3 a movie worth seeing or remembering. The second Home Alone jumped the shark, while this one jumps it again, but it could have been worse. Good thing it wasn't.