Alright, fellow tapeheads, let's rewind to 1997. The Home Alone phenomenon was still echoing through suburban streets, the image of Macaulay Culkin's surprised face forever etched onto our collective consciousness. Then, appearing on the video store shelf, perhaps nestled right next to its iconic predecessors, was Home Alone 3. The familiar font, the promise of festive booby traps… but wait. Who’s this new kid? The initial reaction, for many of us, might have been a mix of intrigue and a healthy dose of skepticism. Could the magic really be recaptured without the McCallisters?
### A New Kid on the Block (And New Threats)
Instead of Kevin, we get Alex Pruitt, played with a game energy by young Alex D. Linz. Stuck at home with chickenpox in snowy Chicago suburbia (a familiar setting!), Alex isn't dealing with bumbling burglars looking for household loot. Oh no, the stakes, in true late-90s fashion, were supposedly higher. This time, the antagonists are a quartet of sophisticated (well, theoretically sophisticated) international spies hunting for a stolen $10 million missile-cloaking computer chip. Yes, you read that right. The villains, led by the stern Peter Beaupre (Olek Krupa) and the slinky Alice Rivens (Rya Kihlstedt), accidentally stash this top-secret tech inside a remote-control car that finds its way into Alex's hands. It’s a premise that immediately distances itself from the simpler, almost relatable motives of Harry and Marv. These aren't your garden-variety Wet Bandits; they're vaguely European-sounding operatives with actual espionage training... which somehow still doesn't prepare them for electrified trampolines and strategically placed dumbbells.
### Hughes' Blueprint, Gosnell's Execution
Behind the scenes, the fingerprints of the late, great John Hughes are still technically all over this film. He returned as both writer and producer, clearly hoping to extend the life of his incredibly successful creation. Hughes, the man who gave us defining teen classics like The Breakfast Club (1985) and Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), certainly knew how to structure a family comedy. However, directing duties passed from Chris Columbus to Raja Gosnell. This wasn't Gosnell's first encounter with the franchise; he skillfully edited the first two Home Alone films, so he undoubtedly understood the rhythm and pacing required. Perhaps it was seen as a safe pair of hands to guide the new iteration, before he went on to direct live-action versions of Scooby-Doo (2002) and The Smurfs (2011).
Despite Hughes' script and Gosnell's familiarity, something feels... different. The warmth and underlying family dynamics that anchored the first two films feel thinner here. The focus shifts almost entirely to the elaborate pranks and the cat-and-mouse game between Alex and the spies. While Linz is certainly likable and delivers his lines with precocious confidence, the film struggles to make us care quite as deeply about his plight or his family connections, which include a blink-and-you'll-miss-it early role for Scarlett Johansson as his older sister, Molly.
### Spies Like Us (But Dumber)
Let’s talk about those traps and the villains who stumble into them. The shift from burglars to spies allows for slightly more high-tech gadgetry on Alex’s part – the remote-control car with a camera becomes his eyes and ears. The traps themselves are classic Home Alone fare, dialed up maybe a notch in complexity, if not always in cleverness. We get the icy steps, the falling weights, the electrocutions, and plenty of painful-looking impacts. There’s a certain undeniable physical comedy inherent in watching supposed professionals get repeatedly outsmarted by an eight-year-old with household objects and too much time on his hands.
However, the villains themselves lack the memorable chemistry and sheer, idiotic persistence of Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern. Krupa, Kihlstedt, David Thornton, and Lenny Von Dohlen do their best with somewhat generic bad-guy roles, but they never quite achieve the iconic status of their predecessors. They feel less like genuine threats and more like slightly inconvenienced operatives who really should have just ordered takeout. One fun bit of trivia: the film reportedly cost $32 million to make – a significant jump from the original's $18 million – but only managed about $79 million worldwide, a shadow of the first film's staggering $476 million haul. It seems audiences, too, felt something was missing.
### A Standalone Stunt Show?
Watching Home Alone 3 today feels like revisiting a familiar formula executed with technical competence but less heart. It functions reasonably well as a standalone kids' action-comedy from the 90s. The practical effects for the traps are often elaborate and, viewed through that nostalgic lens, possess a certain charm we don't always see in today's CGI-heavy landscape. Remember seeing that RC car zipping around, broadcasting grainy footage back to Alex's TV? For 1997, that felt pretty cool!
Yet, it never quite shakes the feeling of being a sequel in name only. It lacks the Christmas magic (despite the snowy setting) and the genuine emotional core about family and belonging that made the first two films resonate so deeply. It’s more of a showcase for inventive, kid-engineered mayhem, which, let’s be honest, still holds a certain appeal. We all probably imagined rigging our own houses after watching any of these films, didn't we?
***
VHS Heaven Rating: 5/10
Justification: Home Alone 3 gets points for effort, a game young lead in Alex D. Linz, and some genuinely elaborate (if less iconic) trap sequences masterminded by John Hughes. Raja Gosnell directs competently, leveraging his experience from editing the originals. However, it suffers from less memorable villains, a weaker emotional connection, and the inescapable comparison to the Culkin classics. It’s a perfectly watchable slice of late-90s family entertainment, offering decent slapstick and kid-power fantasy, but it lacks the essential ingredients that made the first two films timeless holiday staples.
Final Thought: While it might not have been the tape you reached for first at the rental store, Home Alone 3 was likely a familiar fixture on the shelf – a testament to a franchise trying, perhaps a little too hard, to prove that lightning could strike thrice, even with a whole new storm brewing.