Home Alone 3 was released on December 12, 1997, by 20th Century Fox. The film was a box-office success, but received negative reviews from critics, who compared it unfavorably to the previous entries in the series. It was followed by a made-for-television standalone sequel, Home Alone 4, in 2002, which features no returning cast or crew members; it features characters from the first two films, albeit portrayed by different actors.
Plot
Peter Beaupre, Alice Ribbons, Burton Jernigan, and Earl Unger are four internationally wanted criminals working for a Hong Kong-based terrorist organization linked to North Korea. In Silicon Valley, California, they steal a $10 million missile-cloaking microchip and hide it inside a radio-controlled car to get the chip past security at San Francisco International Airport. However, a passenger named Mrs. Hess inadvertently takes the criminals' bag containing the car, mistaking it for her identical bag. The criminals arrive in Chicago and systematically search every house in Hess' suburban neighborhood to find the chip.
Eight-year-old Alex Pruitt is given the toy car by Hess as payment for shoveling her driveway. He returns home and discovers that he has chicken pox and must stay home from school. The next day, Alex discovers the criminals while spying on his neighbors and calls the police, but they are unable to help. Alex attaches a camera to the car and uses it to spy on them, leading to the criminals chasing it when they see it. Wondering what they want with the toy car, Alex opens it and discovers the stolen chip. He calls the local U.S. Air Force Recruitment Center about the discovery and asks if they can forward the information about the chip to the authorities.
The criminals realize that Alex has been watching them and decide to break into the Pruitt house. Alex rigs the house with handmade booby traps with help from his pet rat Doris and his brother Stan's parrot. The criminals break in, spring the traps, and suffer various injuries. While the group pursue Alex around the house, he flees and rescues Hess, who has been taped to a chair in her garage by Alice. Beaupre ambushes Alex, but the latter uses a bubble gun resembling a Glock to scare him off.
FBI agents and the police later arrive and arrest Alice, Jernigan, and Unger, having received a tip from the recruitment center. However, Beaupre hides in a makeshift snow fort in the backyard. Stan's parrot discovers him and threatens to light fireworks, which are lined around the inside. Beaupre offers a cracker in exchange for silence, but the parrot demands two. Since Beaupre has only one, the parrot lights the fireworks, alerting the authorities to Beaupre's location.
That evening, the Pruitts, Mrs. Hess, and the authorities hold a celebration for Alex as the Pruitt house is being repaired, with Alex's father Jack returning home from a business trip. The company the chip was stolen from gives Alex a large monetary reward in gratitude. At the police department, the criminals are shown to have contracted Alex's chicken pox during their mugshots.
Pat Healy as Agent Rogers, an FBI Agent working alongside Stuckey
Production
Home Alone 3 was pitched at the same time as Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), and both films were meant to be produced simultaneously; however, those plans fell through.[3] The idea for a third Home Alone movie was revived in the mid-1990s; early drafts called for Macaulay Culkin to reprise the role of Kevin McCallister as a teenager. However, by 1994, Culkin had taken a hiatus from acting. As a result, the idea was reworked, centering on a new cast of characters.[3]
Home Alone 3 was released theatrically on December 12, 1997, by 20th Century Fox.
Home media and rights
Fox later released the film on VHS and Laserdisc in the U.S. on June 2, 1998.[4] In 1998, it was also released on LaserDisc in Hong Kong and Japan,[5] and subsequently received a U.S. DVD release on November 3, 1998. It was one of Fox's earliest DVD releases, and while the DVD presents the film in its original Widescreen format (1.85:1), it is presented in a non-anamorphic 4:3 matte.[citation needed] The U.S. DVD was later reissued in December 2007 (and also as part of Home Alone multi-packs, in 2006 and 2008). In Australia (Region 4) it was released on DVD in 2000 by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment South Pacific.[6] That same year, Fox also released it on DVD in the United Kingdom (Region 2).[7]
In 2019, Rupert Murdoch sold most of 21st Century Fox's film and television assets to Disney, with Home Alone 3 and the rest of the films in the franchise being included in the deal.[8] It was later made available to stream on Disney+.[9]
Reception
Box office
The film grossed $79,082,515 worldwide, against an estimated budget of $32 million.[2]
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 32% of 26 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.6/10.The website's consensus reads: "Macaulay Culkin's precocious charisma is sorely missed in this hollow sequel, which doubles down on the broad comedy while lacking all the hallmarks that made the original a classic."[10] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[11]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3 out of 4 stars and said that he found it to be "fresh, very funny, and better than the first two."[12] Ebert also praised the film in his review on the December 13, 1997 episode of Siskel and Ebert, giving it a thumbs up. His colleague Gene Siskel gave the film a thumbs down and strongly disagreed with Ebert's positive assessment of the film, leading to a heated argument.[13] At one point, Siskel questioned whether Ebert was "okay", with Ebert responding that he was "better than you were the day that you liked Starship Troopers", referring to Siskel's positive review of that film a month earlier.[13] Clips of their Home Alone 3 review later became popular on the internet in the 2020s.[14]
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