Home Alone 3 (Film Review)

1997 20th Century Fox
Directed by: Raja Gosnell; Written by: John Hughes
Starring: Alex D. Linz and Haviland Morris
MPAA Rating: PG; Running Time: 102 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 2/10

Somehow, eight-year-old Alex Pruitt has gotten his hands on a missile-cloaking microchip.The chip has been stashed inside the unknowing young suburbanite's remote control car by a group of international terrorists, and now they want that chip back. Like Kevin McAllister of yore, Alex will have to protect his home from evil invaders. Only this time he's got a rat and a parrot...and his parents are right down the street.
The first two Home Alone films are very dear to me, but at the same time, Macaulay Culkin and I are roughly the same age, and young Alex D. Linz isn't even old enough to be my little brother. As Alex Pruitt, Linz does okay, though the director has him mugging at the camera far too often. The fact is, by 1997, I hadn't just outgrown the Home Alone franchise--the franchise had outgrown itself. The first two films have a sense of timelessness, with writer, director, actors, and composer all on the same page. While those first two films will surely give those who first saw them in the early 90's some great bursts of nostalgia, the films also feel like they could have been created at any time. Home Alone 3 feels firmly rooted in 1997 in the worst ways possible.
The dialogue, the preciousness of the children all feel rooted in time. The goofy music, which quickly departs from John Williams' signature tones, feel like it could have only come from the late 90's to early 00's. The uselessly convoluted plot, which in the end is only a "get the bad guys into the kid's traps" delivery device, feels like something John Hughes must have surely kept in the back of his script folder, and only used out of necessity. Maybe he used up his Christmas movie mojo in the last two films. There are certainly few moral lessons to be learned here, though the previous two films effortlessly offered them in spades, all organic, none feeling forced.
The worst element here, which may even transcend the film's goofy datedness, is the way Home Alone 3 firmly sits in the "Kid's Movie" genre. While the first two Home Alone films are for everyone, from the kids watching who can easily stand in protagonist Kevin's shoes, to the adults, who can both remember what it was like to be a kid, or identify with the frantic, worried parents. 3 is just for kids, and young ones at that. There's no depth, not even aesthetic joy in the film's bland, grey visual palette, which parlays none of the Christmas spirit, outside of perhaps an empty Target shelf after a vigorous Black Friday sale. 

The villains are the final rotten cherries on this rank sundae. Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern were living Looney Tunes in the first two Home Alone films, but they could still exude menace when necessary. The villains in Home Alone 3 feel like animated farts. In fact, all 102 minutes of Home Alone 3's runtime feel like an animated fart. I hate this movie.