Film / Home Alone 3

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Home Alone 3 is a 1997 American Christmas family comedy film. It's the third installment in the Home Alone series. It was written and produced by John Hughes. Chris Columbus didn't return to direct — that role was given to Raja Gosnell, editor of the first two films (and future director of Big Momma's House, the live-action Scooby-Doo movies, and Beverly Hills Chihuahua).

The film has a completely different cast. The kid, Kevin, is replaced by Alex Pruitt (played by Alex D. Linz). Many of the characters are very much like the characters of the previous movies, with one exception: the stupid burglars, wanted by the local police, were replaced with a ring of four (at least somewhat) intelligent spies/smugglers wanted by the FBI.

Home Alone 3 contains examples of:

• Actionized Sequel: It begins as a spy thriller before switching to slapstick comedy. Alex does not go through a period of trying to find his courage to defend his home. Dramatic plot points like that just slow down the action and hilarity.
• Actor Allusion: As with his previous role in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), James Saito plays the leader of a group of criminals in the form of a Chinese mob boss.
• Actually Pretty Funny: When Jernigan and Alice find what turns out to be a distraction involving a toy monkey, Jernigan starts laughing.
• Adorably Precocious Child: Alex is shown to be highly intelligent very quickly, while also being undeniably adorable. The numerous Batman Gambits he pulls on the terrorists are good indicators of just how smart he is. That said, he's also fairly modest and only takes matters into his own hands when it becomes clear no one will listen to him.
• Adults Are Useless: Deliciously Zig-Zagged. While many of the adults are not helpful early on, there are legitimate understandable reasons why they aren't exactly taking Alex seriously. One of these being that the crooks are competent enough to play adult expectations like a fiddle. However, an Air Force recruiter dutifully taking down Alex's report on the chip despite not thinking it a serious matter leads to a beautiful cavalry moment at the end of the movie.
• Affably Evil: Earl Unger.
• Amplified Animal Aptitude: In addition to parroting speech, the parrot also speaks in its own words a few times, and is also smart enough to haggle and light fireworks.
• Answer Cut: Baupre orders Unger and Alice to access different areas of Alex's house. He notices that Jernigan is missing and asks where he is. There is then a cut to Jernigan getting sprayed by a booby-trapped hose.
• Artistic License – Animal Care:
  • Doris the white rat doesn't have any cage-mates to live with. Fancy rats (and any brown rat for that matter) are extremely social animals that, barring temperament problems, should never be kept as solitary individuals.
  • Similarly, the parrot is being given crackers. This is actually a very bad thing to be giving parrots as a treat - the salt and wheat is not good for their digestive system. They should be given fruits, seeds, or nuts instead.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety: Beaupre's final downfall occurs because he mistakenly grabbed a toy gun, confusing it for the Glock he had left nearby, and carried it with him until Alex pointed out the mistake. Considering he was supposed to know about guns, being an international terrorist wanted by FBI, it's hard to believe he made such a mistake. A loaded gun weighs more or less two pounds, so the disparity in weight with a plastic toy gun is virtually impossible to not notice.
• An Ass-Kicking Christmas: A notable aversion, as there are visible Christmas decorations in the airport at the beginning, and a toy given as a gift to the main character helps set the plot in motion; however, unlike the first two movies which took place during or around Christmas Eve, this movie is explicitly said to take place on and shortly after January 8th.
• Backhanded Apology: Alex delivers one as a form of Tranquil Fury to the police and his mom when the latter tells him to apologize to the police chief before going up to his bedroom.
  Alex: Excuse me for being a good citizen.
• Barbell Beating: One of Alex's traps is a large weighted barbell that falls from the house's roof onto the heads of two of the robbers.
• Batman Gambit: Many of Alex's traps rely on either A) the crooks underestimating him because he's a kid, B) noticing a more obvious trap and trying to circumvent it, and/or C) being fed up enough from triggering previous traps that they will act hastily on a chance to capture him.
• Big Bad: Beaupre is the leader of the quartet of spies that attempt to break into Alex's house.
• Big "WHAT?!": When Alice informs Beaupre that the toy car got away Beaupre's response is this.
• Big Brother Bully: Stan and Molly are the brother and sister variant to Alex. They are largely dismissive and annoying to him throughout the film and after Alex calls in his second failed 911 call, they point out all the harm he caused, including implying that their father will get fired from his job because of him and that the police will no longer respond to his calls anymore.
• Bilingual Bonus: When Peter Beaupre learns that Alex took the chip from the toy car, he gets angry and starts yelling at the boy in Polish: "I'm gonna crush you like a cockroach! Where's the disk?"^note Rozgniotę cię jak karalucha! Gdzie jest dysk? (Yes, he actually called the chip "disk".) It helps that Beaupre's actor Aleksander "Olek" Krupa was born in Poland.
• Bloodless Carnage:
  • Burton Jernigan has a running lawnmower dropped onto his face. We hear agonizing screaming and the scene cuts away. The next time we see him, all he has is a wacky new haircut.
  • And before that, Beaupre and Unger get a trunk full of books dropped on them from a floor up. They act more like they were each hit in the head with a single book. That being said, it did look as if they might have deflected some of the impact with their arms.
    Alice: You got hit with a book?
    Unger: Books. Plural, a trunk full of books. And a set of weights. We got hit twice, ya dumb broad.
    Alice: Excuse me, Mr. Unger. I didn't get taken down by an infant.
• Bound and Gagged: Alice binds and gags Mrs. Hess with white duct tape to a lawn chair in a garage.
• Breaking Old Trends: While in the previous films Kevin's family never learns of his encounters with Marv and Harry, and his story left untold, Alex's family learns of his encounter the criminals and he gets made a hero in the end.
• Bubble Gun: Near the ending of the movie, Beaupre threatens Alex with a gun until the latter points out that the gun is fake and scares him off with a seemingly real gun that shoots bubbles.
• Call-Back: Alice hitting Jernigan in the nads with a crowbar while trying to hit Doris the rat is a callback to the first film where Marv whacks Harry in the sternum while aiming for the tarantula.
• Cassandra Truth:
  • Alex gets blown off by the police officers when he tries to tell them about the spies after they escape for the second time.
  • Subverted with the Air Force recruiting office. While it at first sounds like they're going to dismiss Alex's story, they at least pass the story on to the FBI, who confirm the chip is indeed stolen.
• The Cavalry: Essentially defied, since Alex has things pretty well wrapped up by the time Agent Stucky arrives. However, the fact that he arrives with a convoy consisting of two snowplows, his own car, four police cars, Alex's family in their car, and a fire engine with all sirens blaring definitely invokes this image.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The pet parrot and rat were clearly there to assist Alex in his battle against the spies.
  • Stan's firecrackers. Possibly also a Shout-Out to the way they are used in the first film by Kevin.
  • Played for Laughs with Beaupre eating a single cracker from a pack of two and slips the other in his pocket. When the parrot begins to light the firecrackers and give him away, he offers it as a bribe, but the parrot has been trained to respond to treats with "double or nothing." When Beaupre admits he only has one, "we have ignition!"
• Chickenpox Episode: The main character Alex gets chickenpox (which he discovers after scratching himself silly in public), and while staying home from school, he discovers spies working for North Korea outside his home, kickstarting the plot. The spies end up catching his chickenpox at the end of the movie.
• Child Hater: Unger. This is best seen when he fails to catch Alex hiding in a closet, and in his anger, he punches a picture of Stan, Molly and Alex, breaking the glass. He also has no problem with the idea of whacking every kid in the neighborhood and burning them.
• Comedic Underwear Exposure: Happens to Alice when her pantsuit rips.
• Continuity Nod: Mrs. Hess remembers having "chicken pox when Herbert Hoover was in the White House". In the previous film, it is mentioned that Herbert Hoover stayed at the Plaza Hotel where Kevin was.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Four international spies/smugglers instead of two burglars.
• Covers Always Lie: Alex is never seen wearing the outfit he's dressed with on the poster.
• Cut-and-Paste Suburb: A big problem for the villains. Since all the houses looked roughly the same the description they got from the taxi driver was useless, forcing them to systematically go through every house on the street.
• Darker and Edgier: Taken to whole new levels. The new villains aren't petty house robbers, they're part of a terrorist organization! Alice actually ties Mrs. Hess up in a garage and then leaves the door open, exposing her to the freezing weather conditions. She's not far from unconsciousness when she's finally rescued.
• Deadpan Snarker: Unger, even when he's half-frozen.
• Dumbwaiter Ride: Alex uses a dumbwaiter to evade the terrorists who were looking for him. One of them realizes this was how he got outside the house from the attic after she and two of her cohorts realize too late the trampoline was a trap (the two men jumped into the trampoline, which caused them to get stuck in the frozen swimming pool) and tries it herself, but the moment the dumbwaiter reaches the attic, she falls down the shaft, because Alex removed the bottom shortly before escaping the house.
• Eek, a Mouse!!: Alice is terrified of Doris the rat.
• Establishing Character Moment: When we first meet Alex, he's dutifully shoveling snow off of Mrs. Hess' driveway. When she berates him for not shoveling as early as he says he would, he apologizes and says that she doesn't have to pay him (and promises he wouldn't tell people she "stiffed" him as she believes). It's only after she's given him the toy car and shut the door in his face that he grumbles about her being a mean old lady. This shows that he's a good-hearted, smart kid, but that he's no one's doormat.
• "Eureka!" Moment: An understated one, but still apt. After witnessing Beaupre sneak into two houses and not take anything, Alex suspects it's because he's looking for something specific, and checking houses in the neighborhood trying to figure out who has it. After their next encounter involves the spies chasing Alex's remote control car that he's strapped a camcorder to, he wonders why they'd chase it when they took the tape out already, it isn't that expensive and they wouldn't be interested in the toy itself. This leads to him having the idea to pop it open, and when the missile chip falls into his lap he lets out a stunned "whoa".
• Expy: Alex is mostly recycled from Kevin. Also a Suspiciously Similar Substitute.
• Eye Scream: Alex sprays black paint over Beaupre's eyes through the front door's mail slot.
• Failed a Spot Check: Several times by the criminals in regards to the trap, but the worst has to be when they think Alex escaped the third floor by jumping onto a trampoline. A trampoline with pristine undisturbed snow on it, meaning he couldn't have possibly touched it.
• Fake-Out Opening: The movie starts with a bunch of shady characters smuggling a piece of military hardware through airport security.
• Family Versus Career:
  Karen Pruitt: You are asking me to choose between making a house payment and taking care of my sick child, and I really don't appreciate it!
• Fanservice: The scene where Alice's pants rip, exposing her underwear.
• Farts on Fire: Happens twice to Unger when he is being shocked with sparks shooting from his ass both times.
• FBI Agent: The movie features FBI Agent Stuckey, who is on the trail of four internationally wanted spies working for a North Korean terrorist organization who stole a top-secret missile cloaking microchip from a defense department contractor. The spies hide out in the Chicagoland area due to the chip having been misplaced due to a baggage mixup and search the neighborhood of eight-year-old Alex Pruitt for it, but the eight-year-old, bedridden with the chickenpox, knows what they're up to and has tipped off the Air Force about the chip, who in turn, tip off Stuckey of the spies' current location, and he has loaded his house with painful booby traps should the spies target his home next.
• First-Name Basis: Alice is always referred to by her first name, as opposed to her surname like her male compatriots. By the way, her surname is Ribbons, as revealed by Stuckey.
• Flower-Pot Drop: Alice trips two wires releasing poinsettia plants from a neighboring house. The first hits her on the head and the second lands on her face.
• Food as Bribe: The brother's parrot only plays along with the scheme if you have TWO crackers.
  "Double, or nothing"
• Foreign-Language Tirade: Peter Beaupre blows up in a short tirade against the protagonist after he doesn't find his chip in a toy car, possibly in the actor's native Polish (Aleksander Krupa).
• Forgotten State of Undress: While reassuring Alex that everything's going to be alright, his father nearly leaves for his business trip without his pants (which he'd been ironing). Luckily, Alex (after a bit of teasing) points out to him his Wardrobe Malfunction.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: This film takes place after Christmas instead of before like the other five films.
• Franchise Three-Invention: Home Alone 3 follows the formula of the first two movies but with a completely new set of characters and virtually no connection to the previous installments. This also applies to subsequent sequels, though the fourth would feature In Name Only versions of the original characters.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In the scene where Alex searches his drawer for a dog whistle to distract Alice Ribbons' dog with, sharp-eyed viewers will notice three Sega games inside it; Sonic 3D Blast for the Genesis, and Arcade Classics and Super Columns for the Game Gear.
• Groin Attack:
  • Everyone initially assumes Alex slammed the toilet seat on his crotch when he does his Skyward Scream on discovering he has chickenpox.
  • Beaupre gets one from a boxing glove in the foyer's closet, causing him to fall on his gun. Then there's Alice giving one to Jernigan with a field hockey stick by mistake while trying to hit Doris the rat.
• Harmless Electrocution: Both of Alex's electricity-based traps leave the bad guys with some damage on their clothes and one with a new "haircut", but otherwise, just like Marv in Home Alone 2, they don't suffer burns, seizures etc.
• Harmless Freezing: Two of the villainous spies, Unger and Jernigan, being defeated by falling into a pool with cold water in the middle of the winter. When the cops find and arrest them, the two are covered in frost, but otherwise fine and even perfectly able to walk afterwards. Averted with Mrs. Hess, who is exposed to the cold for an extended period of time, is mostly unresponsive by the time Alex finds her, and needs medical attention.
• Hastily Hidden MacGuffin: The MacGuffin is a stolen computer chip that the villains hid in a remote control car to escape suspicion. After a mix-up at SFO, Mrs. Hess ends up with the car and gives it to Alex as payment for shoveling her drive.
• Hero Antagonist: Alex can count, as the main focus seems to be the criminals trying to get the chip.
• Hollow-Sounding Head: Alice. Any of the many times she hits her head or is hit in the head by something the audience hears a loud, suspiciously empty sounding *thunk*.
• Hypocritical Humor: Before cutting a live wire, Unger comments on how stupid kids can be.
• I Can See You: When the thieves reach the attic, Unger finds the television and cameras that Alex had been using.
  Unger: He's been watching us the whole time.
  (his colleagues groan)
  Unger: Got a camera on us.
• I Fell for Hours: Jernigan enters through a second-story window in search of Alex and falls through holes in the floors to the basement. While that should be three stories, he appears to go down seven floors.
• Ill-Timed Sneeze: Subverted. Alex hides in the closet but avoids detection by Unger, even after he sneezes.
• Informed Ability: Remember, the Stupid Crooks of this movie are supposed to be veteran master spies and assassins taking on a kid, and the Curb-Stomp Battle is in favor of the kid.
• Instant Soprano: After Doris the rat climbs up Jernigan's pant leg and Alice tries to club her.
• Jaw Drop: When Agent Stuckey relates to Alex's family what is going on, his brother's, sister's, and the police chief's jaws all drop. Half because they realize Alex had been telling the truth all along, and half because of the situation Alex has gotten himself into regarding National Security with being in possession of a valuable DOD microchip that North Korea wants.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Sure, Stan and Molly like to pick on Alex. However, when he's placed in a dangerous situation, their Big Sibling Instincts kick in. This is shown when they refuse to let Stuckey and the Feds leave without explaining why Alex is in danger.
• Kinda Busy Here: Alex's mom calls while he's home alone with the burglars.
• Kiss of Death: Alice kisses Mrs. Hess on the forehead, after gagging her and taping her to a chair and then leaving the door open so the winter air will freeze her to death.
• Last-Name Basis: Beaupre, Unger and Jernigan are all referred to as "Mr. (surname)", or by their surnames alone. Only Jernigan gets a single mention of his given name (Burton). The former two's first names are revealed by Stuckey to be Peter and Earl, respectively.
• MacGuffin: The microchip that the North Korea-affiliated terrorists are after.
• Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold: Mrs. Hess fills the role this time, though unlike her two predecessors, who just have undeserved reputations, she's rude and surly until the chips are down and she realizes there's real danger. From her point of view, Alex is this; she sees him as a brat and his entire involvement in the plot starts when she gives him the car because she doesn't want it and didn't want to properly pay him for shoveling the walk, but as she tells him later, "you're a very sweet young man, I just never took the time to know you".
• Mood Whiplash: After the spies suffer through most of the traps, which is humorous, Alex's mom Karen calls him. The film gets a little tense because at this point Alex is trying to get her to not come home while Alice, Jernigan and Unger begin to search the house. Also Beaupre listens to the conversation between Alex and Karen using the basement phone so he can plan his next move.
• Mouth Taped Shut: Alice Ribbons tapes Mrs. Hess to a lawn chair, then tapes her mouth shut after luring her into the garage.
• Ms. Fanservice: Regardless of her mean spirit - Alice is a highly attractive woman. Admirers should be pleased with the sight of her rear end in form-fitting pants. It's most noticeable when she's running in yoga pants while pushing a phony baby stroller, and again when she bends over to pick up a hat and rips her pants. Her red underwear is seen underneath. A less appealing example occurs when she squeezes into a dumb waiter. Her butt hovers directly over the camera for a brief second.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Alex, when he discovers that he has the chickenpox, lets out a scream that gives Kevin a run for his money.
  • TV spots for this movie featured a parody of "Jingle Bells" with a small "Home Alone" house bouncing along the on-screen lyrics, just as the TV spots for the first movie did.
• Never My Fault: Multiple:
  • Alice: She poses as if she is the smartest and most competent of the group. Yet, whenever Alex has really found himself in a corner, she is the one who most ended up making a mistake for which the kid eventually escaped:
    • When the group manages to retrieve the camera, Alice, for no good reason other than evidently mocking whoever was filming, turns the camera back on before retrieving the chip, allowing Alex to start driving it again and escape.
    • When Unger sees Alex trying to retrieve Doris, he lashes out and would have even managed to catch him except that Alice tries to intervene by trying to catch him as well, leading her and Unger to clash.
    • Jernigan, after getting hit in the crotch by Alice while trying to kill Doris the rat, calls her out on it. Unfortunately, she simply tells him it's his own fault for having rats in his pants as a result of never changing his underwear.
  • Jernigan hits Unger with car. Perhaps it is true that the collision was accidental, but the fact remains that Jernigan really waited a few seconds too long before braking, yet he does not seem to show in the least that he is also in the wrong.
  • Miss Hess talks about how she ended up with the car as if it was someone else who switched the bags, while the viewers clearly see that it was her the one who picked up the wrong bag without checking that is was the right one.
• Never Trust a Title: It has nothing to do with the first two Home Alone films.
• No Name Given: Stan's pet parrot is never named.
• No One Should Survive That!: While not as dangerous overall as the traps in the second movie, there are a couple of traps that easily would've killed the criminals. Getting hit square in the head with the loaded barbell should've completely destroyed Beaupre and Unger's heads, and Alice (especially when you consider her positioning) should've immediately died on impact after falling down the dumbwaiter shaft. Jernigan also should have had his head destroyed by a running lawnmower.
• No Time to Explain: Alex ends up doing this a lot near the end, since he's spent days by this point giving full explanations to the authorities but are quickly dismissed.
• Oddball in the Series: This is the only Home Alone film that doesn't take place on Christmas; the events begin on January 8 - this was probably done to give the family a reason to be out of the house during the battle between Alex and the crooks. It's also the only one where the antagonists are international terrorists instead of just local thieves, and the only film not to feature any members of the McCalister family.
• Oh, Crap!: Unger has a good reaction upon realizing that he ran straight into the path of the minivan Jernigan's driving.
• Oh, No... Not Again!: After Alex confirms in the bathroom mirror that he has chickenpox marks (specifically, on his butt) he screams. His older sister calls from her room, completely deadpan "Alex slammed the toilet seat on his thing again!" His dad, on the phone downstairs, calmly tells the person he's talking to "I gotta go, my son slammed the toilet seat on his thing again". The person on the other side makes a sympathy noise!
• Only One Name: Subverted. The full names of all four of the bad guys are revealed by Stuckey: Peter Beaupre, Earl Unger, Burton Jernigan and Alice Ribbons.
• Outside-Context Problem: Alex to the crooks. They can run rings around law enforcement and adults with little issue. They are very much not prepared to deal with a creative 8-year old (justified at first, before they realize how capable he is).
• Parental Obliviousness: The parents aren't on vacation, they're just at work. Several of the booby traps were already there when they leave on the final day; in fact, at one point Alex has to fetch his mom's coat so that she doesn't find out about one trap in the closet.
• Properly Paranoid: After suffering through several of his traps, the mercenaries pull their weapons and start clearing the house for Alex, though they end up grabbing the Idiot Ball toward the end.
• Put on a Prison Bus: After several attempts by eight-year-old Alex Pruitt to catch four internationally wanted spies working for a North Korean terrorist group burglarizing his neighborhood while they search for a top-secret missile-cloaking microchip and while he recovers from the chickenpox, the film ends with said spies being caught by the police and the FBI after they attempt to burglarize the Pruitt residence, only to suffer numerous injuries from all the booby traps Alex laid out for them, plus contracting his chickenpox when they have their mugshots taken.
• "Rear Window" Witness: Alex is home sick from school and witnesses the burglary of a neighbor's home. Unfortunately for Alex, the authorities disregard his explanations, considering that Beaupre and his crew are able to evade the local PD, so they think Alex was Crying Wolf.
• Rock Beats Laser: The spies were able to pick locks and use a special tool to defeat a security system, but in the end were not a match for Alex's traps, which attacked in unique ways.
• Rule of Perception: Beaupre can't tell he's holding a toy gun spray-painted black, despite it being about three pounds lighter than the Glock he'd been carrying and having a suction cup sticking out of the barrel. Granted, Alex apparently stores this particular toy gun in what looks like an actual gun case, so barring the suction cup ammunition it may have been modified to be much more realistic than most toys.
• Satchel Switcheroo: The movie starts with two identical shopping bags in an airport. One contains a toy car with a microchip stolen from the Army hidden inside it. The other contains French bread.
• Schmuck Bait: Alex's homemade electric fence is overlayed with red yarn and a very deliberately childish sign warning everyone that it's an electric fence and not to touch it. Unger falls for it hook, line and sinker.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: After the police fail to catch the spies twice, Alex decides to deal with the burglars himself by using his remote control car to film their next burglary in the act. When that eventually leads to the discovery of the chip, he calls an Air Force recruiting office, which then alerts the FBI. When he realizes the spies know where he lives, then he sets up the booby traps.
• Sequel Escalation: In the previous two movies, the stakes were that the Wet Bandits might pull off a robbery (either the McCallister house or a NYC toy store). And the traps were relatively tame (though the ones in the second were comparatively more dangerous than those of the first). This movie further ups the ante with the traps used, one of them being a lawn mower falling on a man's face. The movie's story changes the bad guys from petty thieves with big aspirations to terrorists/smugglers and make the traps much more elaborate; at one point the main character has a budgie riding a remote-controlled car strike a match to light some dynamite to blow up the criminal's leader.
• Smuggling with Dolls: The villains hide the microchip inside a toy car to get it across borders. The plan fails miserably when an old lady at the airport accidentally grabs the bag with the chip inside.
• Snowed-In: The villains take advantage of a snowstorm to isolate the street and steal the chip they are after. Unfortunately for them, Alex Pruitt, a resourceful local kid, gets trapped by the same snowstorm in his home - and since there is no outside help coming, he has to stop them all on his own.
• Spy Cam: One of the baddies has a secret glove spy cam with which he takes pictures of the cab the old lady is riding away in.
• Suspicious Lack of Theft: During the first part of the film, Alex spots Beaupre and his team snooping around two of his neighbors' houses. Unfortunately, when the police arrive, they either have left or are hiding, and nothing appears to be taken. This baffles Alex at first, until he suspects that the villains are actually looking for something in particular, only they don't know which house it's in.
• Sympathetic Wince: Alex winces and says "ouch" when the barbell falls on Beaupre and Unger's heads, although he is the one responsible for that. He also winces and widens his eyes when the boxing glove he hid in the closet hits Beaupre's privates.
• Tagline: "There's a new kid on the block."
• Underestimating Badassery: Practically all of the initial Amusing Injuries the crooks suffer are a direct result of dismissing Alex as Just a Kid.
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: The true villain is a shady looking Chinese fellow who represents the interests of the North Korean government.
• Villainous Breakdown: The spies get angrier and angrier the more they suffer the traps to the point that they pull out their weapons once they are inside Alex's house. Beaupre tries to remain calm but when he finds out the microchip is not in the toy car he starts to yell at Alex in Polish and threatens him with his gun (which ended up being fake).
• Villainous Exit Denied: After the other spies are arrested, Beaupre hides inside a mini-igloo in the backyard. However, the snarly parrot lights the firecrackers inside, alerting the authorities to his presence.
• Villain Respect: Beaupre listens in on a call between Alex and his mother. During the call, Alex talks his mother into not returning home quickly and therefore keeping her out of harm's way, to which he remarks:
  Beaupre: What a brave little fellow. (grins)
• Visual Pun: Lampshaded by Unger when the police find him and Jernigan frozen in the swimming pool:
  Officer: Freeze!
  Unger: You gotta be kidding me.
• Wardrobe Malfunction: The female robber, Alice Ribbons bends over to pick up a hat ripping open her pants to expose her red underwear. Let it be noted she's on a mission to steal a computer chip when this happens.
• Watch Where You're Going!: Alice chases after the remote controlled car towards a hedge, unaware that Beaupre is running from the other side to intercept it. They jump from opposite directions at the exact same time, and their heads collide.
• Waxing Lyrical: Mrs. Hess paraphrases "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" by Tony Bennett. Later, Alice quotes the song verbatim.
• Weapon for Intimidation: Alex removes the extraneous frame pieces of his bubble gun and then spray painting the basic frame black so that it looks like an actual gun. He does end up using it to scare the terrorist leader into running away.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: After Beaupre speaks with the terrorists' employer, the latter disappears and is never seen or mentioned again.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Near the end of the movie, when the police arrive at the Pruitt residence to arrest the spies, one of them, trapped in the frozen-over swimming pool with one of his fellow spies, says it word-for-word when the two are held at gunpoint by an officer who orders them to "Freeze!"