James Proclaims!

The biggest problem with Home Alone 3 is that it’s called Home Alone 3. It’s a movie I have avoided since its 1997 release, mainly because it doesn’t take a genius to work out that a sequel that has none of the original cast or characters is probably not a sequel at all, and fairly unlikely to be any good. Well that, and the fact that by 1997 I was no longer the age of the target audience, something I very much had been when the first two movies were released.

Were it to be released now, I’m fairly sure that while the movie would undoubtedly have cashed in on the Home Alone brand, it would not have been released with the number ‘3’ attached to it. Instead it would have either been a straight Home Alone reboot, or released with some kind of subtitle much like the later entries in the franchise.

As it happens, Home Alone 3, while evidently not a ‘good movie’ is far better than anyone deserved it to be. Certainly it lacks the charisma of Macauley Culkin, but Alex D Linz is perfectly likeable in the main role and his protagonist is significantly more heroic and slightly less sadistic than Culkin’s ‘Kevin’.

And, in fairness, aside from the cartoonish violence that defines all the Home Alone movies, the third outing does attempt to tell a different kind of story in the build up to the all too predictable finale. The bad guys initially seem like a far more of credible threat than Harry and Marv ever did, but unfortunately then make a series of stupidly inexplicable decisions, which rather undermines that credibility. The film is also far too reliant on a wise-cracking parrot to move the narrative forwards.

I can never hold this in the same esteem as the first two movies, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone who was age-appropriate at the time of its release actually does love it every bit as much as I love the originals. If nothing else, it’s worth re-watching now for the novelty of seeing a young Scarlett Johansson before she was famous.

Score for Christmasishness

While the movie follows the established Home Alone pattern of being set around Christmas time, this one is definitely less focused on the time of year and here it is definitely more of a background theme. There are Christmas decorations and snow in abundance, but it’s all very much incidental; there’s a fairly compelling argument that this one could be set at any time of year. It isn’t, so it still deserves a fairly high Christmasishness score; just not full marks like its predecessors.