Lights out in 'Home Alone 3' without Macaulay Culkin

Lights out in 'Home Alone 3' without Macaulay Culkin

By Stevie Emilia

JAKARTA (JP): John Hughes' Home Alone 3, set for local
theaters this Christmas, is yet more confirmation that sequels
are not necessarily equals of their successful predecessors.

This is not only due to the absence of Macaulay Culkin, star
of both previous efforts which had combined grosses of US$833
million worldwide and are the only comedies among the 10 highest
box office grossers of all time. Simply put, it is because the
third entry in the series is a pale, tired copy of the first plot
of the child left home alone as a gang of thieves descends.

The difference here is that eight-year-old Alex. D. Linz, the
replacement for Culkin, now a grown-up 17,, has to defend not
only his home, but also his neighborhood from members of an
international crime syndicate instead of bumbling burglars.

Like the two previous blockbusters, Hughes again serves as the
creative mind and producer behind Home Alone 3 where he unites
with seasoned film editor Raja Gosnell.

This marks Gosnell's directorial debut, replacing Chris
Columbus from the earlier films.

Linz, who costarred with Michelle Pfeiffer and George Clooney
in the romantic comedy One Fine Day and made his debut in Jim
Carrey's comedy Cable Guy, is inevitably pressured in the part of
Alex Pruitt to make people forget the angelic looks and lovable
hijinks of Culkin.

The latter, the highest paid child star in Hollywood history
with an estimated fortune of $17 million, has not appeared in a
movie since 1994's Richie Rich and Getting Even With Dad due to
the usual adolescent problems and the hostile divorce of his
parents.

The story centers on the disappearance of a computer chip
containing top-secret U.S. defense plans, which was smuggled
inside mechanical components of the toy car by a quartet of
international thieves at Hong Kong's airport.

The toy was accidentally picked up by Alex's grumpy neighbor,
Mrs. Hess, played by Tony Award-winning stage actress Marian
Seldes.

The chip is worth $10 million on the black market, and the
quartet, led by spiffy but deadly foreigner, Petr Beaupre (Olek
Krupa), tracks it down from Hong Kong to San Francisco, and
finally to the Chicago suburb of North Devon Park.

Pretending to be the Pruitt's new neighbors, the bad guys
search for the chip from house to house armed with their high-
tech gadgets.

Linz is like an adult in a kid's body, able to figure out by
himself that the criminals are looking for the chip inside his
toy car and checking its ID number before calling the U.S.
defense department to report his finding.

Krupa, featured in 9 1/2 Weeks, Eraser and Fair Game, and his
band of criminals are no match for Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern as
Harry and Marv in the previous films.

Encounter

How Alex gets the chip stretches the bounds of feasibility,
but it is still tolerable. Harder to fathom is how a child with
chicken pox is left untended by his parents, played by Haviland
Morris (Sixteen Candles, Who's That Girl) and Kevin Kilner
(Switch, The Stoned Age), and two obnoxious older siblings,
scaled down from the five in the earlier movies.

The story may be entertainingly predictable, but it is still
hard to see a sick child, his Einstein brain functioning fine,
putting savvy criminals through an obstacle course of falls,
crashes and slams.

Those pratfalls were designed by veteran stunt coordinator
R.A. Rondell (Dante's Peak, Waterworld). Academy Award-winning
production designer Henry Bumstead (Vertigo, The Sting) created
the Pruitt attic, where Linz sets up his command post while
plotting the downfall of the bad guys, and the backyard swimming
pool.

Children might be amused watching another child beating the
bad guys with the help of his pet rat and a babbling parrot even
though the criminals are no different from ones in corny Indian
movies: they never die no matter how hard you hit them.

For mature viewers, it is hard to digest that a boy -- no
matter how clever he is -- can outwit criminals armed with guns
and surveillance equipment.

Despite all the foul play, Hughes still manages to include
some heart-warming moments, in the same vein as when Mac cheered
up the lonely old man, Robert Blossoms, in the first Home, and
his friendship with the Pigeon Lady, Brenda Ficker, in the
second.

This time, Alex softens Mrs. Bess' hard edge when he rescues
her after she was tied up in the freezing cold.

Hughes tried to remove the weighty sequel tag from his film by
casting a brand new cast of characters for the family.

He even filmed a modest Tudor-style home in Chicago instead of
the million-dollar mansion in Winnetka, Illinois, from the
earlier movies.

These efforts were futile because Home Alone 3 faithfully
follows the formula of the previous films, with little new to
offer. This will probably not faze the children to whom this is
targeted, but the same cannot be said for the adults who might be
forced to accompany them.