Set sometime after the events of the second film, the Sawyer family consisting of widowed father Clifford (John Calvin) and his two children Annie (Aimee Brooks) and Johnny (Christian & Joseph Cousins) head back home from vacation stopping at a rest stop due to a flat tire just outside of Grover's Bend. There Annie and Johnny befriend a boy named Josh Briggs (Leonardo DiCaprio) the son of the intimidating Mr. Briggs (William Dennis Hunt) who unbeknownst to the Sawyer's is their absentee landlord who is paying the super of their building Frank (Geoffrey Blake) to make their building unlivable so the tenants leave voluntarily allowing Briggs not to pay relocation costs. The kids also have a chance encounter with Charlie MacFadden (Don Keith Opper) who has laid traps in the woods hunting aliens according to his words which all except Johnny dismiss with Charlie giving Johnny a crystal that glows when the crites are nearby. As the Sawyer family return home unaware crites have smuggled themselves with them, the Sawyers and the building tenants team up to fend off the crites.
While 1988's Critters 2: The Main Course wasn't well received critically and underperformed at the box office, both it and its predecessor experienced strong ancillaries from cable and home video despite at the time New Line having outsourced their home video distribution to RCA/Columbia meaning those ancillaries were shared. Following the establishment of New Line's own home video label Critters series producers Rupert Harvey and Barry Opper came back to New Line with an agreement to produce two back-to-back Critters sequels for the home video label with a total cost of $2.5 million which New Line agreed to. Per the standards of direct-to-video genre films of the 90s Critters 3 does feel scaled back from its predecessor, but the fact it comes from the same production team does make it retain some of the fun of the original and its predecessor.
The first major misstep with Critters 3 is with the Sawyer family as they're unfortunately not very well written and the chemistry between them feels non-existent. One particular scene where Annie and Clifford have an "argument" (where neither raises their voice above the starting tone) is very lacking in setup, passion, or energy and it just pales in comparison to the establishment of the Brown family in the first one, or even in the relationship between Brad and his grandmother in the second film. The movie is a case of every else in the movie being more interesting than our leads with Diana Bellamy showing some good comic timing as a neighbor named Roasalie, or Frances Bay and Bill Zuckert playing an eccentric elderly couple who look after Annie and Johnny when Clifford's away on business, and even though Leonardo DiCaprio has not spoken fondly of the movie in hindsight he still has more charisma and screen presence than Aimee Brooks so you'd be forgiven for mistaking him as the lead if you were to watch his scenes out of context. The Chiodo brothers return once again to provide the Critter puppets, but there's only 5 or 6 at any given time and we never get anything nearly on the level of over the top critter shenanigans of the sequel or the impact of the original. The Chiodos weren't entirely satisfied with their work on this or the fourth film as they were given a significantly reduced budget and schedule and were inundated with other projects aside from the Critters so as a result a good chunk of this film features the critters in very limited light with very limited location variety. It's pretty clear that the series is running out of ideas for how to use the Critters because at one point it just shows them doing nothing in a kitchen while drinking soap, farting, or having a pie fight with tartlettes, and it's an unwritten rule that when you're resorting to a pie fight you've pretty much given up.
Critters 3 is what it is, a direct to video sequel banking off the legacy of its predecessors. Aside from some uninteresting leads there is some entertainment coming from the supporting cast, and while not to the level we saw in the first two some of the critter carnage can occasionally be impactful or score a laugh. There's really not much to say about this movie other than "it's there, and done better before".
While 1988's Critters 2: The Main Course wasn't well received critically and underperformed at the box office, both it and its predecessor experienced strong ancillaries from cable and home video despite at the time New Line having outsourced their home video distribution to RCA/Columbia meaning those ancillaries were shared. Following the establishment of New Line's own home video label Critters series producers Rupert Harvey and Barry Opper came back to New Line with an agreement to produce two back-to-back Critters sequels for the home video label with a total cost of $2.5 million which New Line agreed to. Per the standards of direct-to-video genre films of the 90s Critters 3 does feel scaled back from its predecessor, but the fact it comes from the same production team does make it retain some of the fun of the original and its predecessor.
The first major misstep with Critters 3 is with the Sawyer family as they're unfortunately not very well written and the chemistry between them feels non-existent. One particular scene where Annie and Clifford have an "argument" (where neither raises their voice above the starting tone) is very lacking in setup, passion, or energy and it just pales in comparison to the establishment of the Brown family in the first one, or even in the relationship between Brad and his grandmother in the second film. The movie is a case of every else in the movie being more interesting than our leads with Diana Bellamy showing some good comic timing as a neighbor named Roasalie, or Frances Bay and Bill Zuckert playing an eccentric elderly couple who look after Annie and Johnny when Clifford's away on business, and even though Leonardo DiCaprio has not spoken fondly of the movie in hindsight he still has more charisma and screen presence than Aimee Brooks so you'd be forgiven for mistaking him as the lead if you were to watch his scenes out of context. The Chiodo brothers return once again to provide the Critter puppets, but there's only 5 or 6 at any given time and we never get anything nearly on the level of over the top critter shenanigans of the sequel or the impact of the original. The Chiodos weren't entirely satisfied with their work on this or the fourth film as they were given a significantly reduced budget and schedule and were inundated with other projects aside from the Critters so as a result a good chunk of this film features the critters in very limited light with very limited location variety. It's pretty clear that the series is running out of ideas for how to use the Critters because at one point it just shows them doing nothing in a kitchen while drinking soap, farting, or having a pie fight with tartlettes, and it's an unwritten rule that when you're resorting to a pie fight you've pretty much given up.
Critters 3 is what it is, a direct to video sequel banking off the legacy of its predecessors. Aside from some uninteresting leads there is some entertainment coming from the supporting cast, and while not to the level we saw in the first two some of the critter carnage can occasionally be impactful or score a laugh. There's really not much to say about this movie other than "it's there, and done better before".