12/12/97
MOVIE REVIEW:
Home Alone 3
'Alone 3': Deja vu works with fresh kid and gags

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

**** (out of five)
Starring Alex D. Linz, Haviland Morris, Olek Krupa, Rya Kihlstedt, David Thornton, Lenny Von Dohlen, Kevin Kilner, Marian Seldes, Seth Smith, Scarlett Johansson. A 20th Century Fox picture written by John Hughes, directed by Raja Gosnell. Rated PG, contains comic violence. Running time: 101 minutes.

I'm not sure whether it was when the man's pants exploded or when a white rat crawled out of his underwear that got the biggest laughs from the kids at a recent screening of Home Alone 3.

On the other hand, maybe it was the two guys falling into the icy waters of a swimming pool in January.

Whatever, Home Alone 3 continues the merry, broad-based slapstick antics of its predecessors in high style. It's the kind of movie that kids will love and parents won't find too hard to take. They'll probably be laughing just as hard.

Writer John Hughes keeps coming up with pretty much the same movie for his Home Alone series, but why not stick with a winner? The audience isn't going to mind. There is always a new crop of kids to laugh at the antics of a youngster who ingeniously takes on the bad guys and wins.

And in Alex D. Linz, an unselfconscious 8-year-old who makes the little hero intelligent and savvy, he has found another winner.

Hughes came up with a snappy formula for the first Home Alone movie back in 1990, with Macaulay Culkin as a boy who thwarts a pair of burglars while he's accidentally left home alone in the Chicago suburbs during the Christmas holidays. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York moved the action to Manhattan, but again had Culkin defeating the same lunkheaded burglars.

In Home Alone 3 the action is back in the Chicago suburbs, but Culkin has grown up and been replaced by Linz. Funny burglars Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern are gone, too, replaced and multiplied by two. Olek Krupa, Rya Kihlstedt, Lenny Von Dohlen and David Thornton play international thieves working for the North Koreans who are after a stolen Air Force missile computer chip.

A car and a chip

The crucial chip is hidden in a remote-controlled toy car in a bag which accidentally gets switched at the airport and eventually winds up in the home of young Alex Pruitt (Linz). Suffering (but not too much) with chicken pox, Alex is home alone, too, when the crooks invade his neighborhood looking for the car and the chip.

So the ante has been upped, the formula has been rearranged, but the results -- zany mayhem -- are the same. So are the laughs. Although there will be a certain sense of deja vu for older members of the audience, the kids at a recent screening were on the floor with laughter as they cheered on Alex as he worked with a green parrot and a white rat to throttle the thieves.

And throttled they are -- bruised and battered and broken as Alex booby traps his house. They're electrocuted and have barbells dropped on their heads. They're spray-painted and glued and plastered and frozen and nearly drowned by the time things are over.

It's wacky fun that even parents might find irresistible, played fast and innocently by director Raja Gosnell, a former film editor (his credits include both previous Home Alone movies) who obviously knows how to spring surprises and keep the momentum going.

But it's not just a case of bopping and bruising people. Hughes's script gives little Alex a strong home life, with loving, concerned parents, a snotty older brother and sister and a rather imperious elderly neighbor. The latter is played by longtime New York stage veteran Marian Seldes with just enough crustiness for us to keep our distance, yet with enough curmudgeonly charm to make her eventual coming around seem genuine and rewarding.

Colorful cohorts

The understated Linz never goes overboard in his acting. It doesn't hurt that his two cohorts on the escapade are that photogenic rat (who cowers at the sight of a cat, even on a TV screen) and that wiseguy parrot whose vocals keep the crooks guessing.

We cheer them on, even if some of Alex's stunts seem nothing short of brilliant-bordering-on-impossible, like hooking up a small video camera atop the remote-controlled car and then sending it all over the neighborhood so he can observe the crooks stalking the area.

The four crooks are classic movie buffoons who get their comeuppance in a multitude of funny ways. Home Alone 3 is a laugh-filled way to end the year.