Critters 3 - The only film where Leo looked his age

In case you don’t know, ‘Critters 3’ is best known for being the first ever film to feature Leonardo DiCaprio.  Here, he plays a kid who is a kid.  Then, forever after, he was destined to play an adult who looks like a kid.  But then that’s just me being bitter at his seeming inability to age.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen ‘Critters 3’ then you might want to start with the first two, as they’re arguably better and, well, chronology and all that.  The Critters are little alien monsters who crash-landed on Earth and generally eat everyone and everything – or rather everyone and everything who isn’t one of the lead cast.  These baddies tend to only eat people you won’t really care about.  Or at least they certainly do now!

I haven’t seen another monster/slasher film where the villains do so little damage to so few people.  If the Critters franchise was ever really classed as ‘horror’ (which it wasn’t really – it was more only every horror with a spoonful of comedy).  Now, it really is played out tongue-in-cheek with no real attempts to scare you.  The Critters roll and bounce around the place, bumping into things and come across more like Mr Bean with bigger teeth than anything that really threatens humankind.

Critters 3 is a short film.  And for good reason.  There really isn’t that much in the way of plot to fill it.  You get the little monsters brought back from the countryside into a big city.  You’d think that with the added number of human-prey this would make a change from the farm-country the previous two were set in.  However, the whole film is basically set in one apartment block.  And, for some reason, no one (Critter or human) ever really seems to make much of a play to leave the building.  You could argue that this creates an air of tension and claustrophobia.  But it doesn’t.  It’s just a cheap continuation of the franchise.

Yes, I know I’m being kind of negative.  And this is yet another step down for the franchise.  But that’s not to say that I didn’t find some enjoyment in it.  The Critters themselves – one again – are the real stars and, for all their ‘prat-falls’ they’re still quite fun to watch.  

If you like your eighties monster-horror films then you’re probably best off sticking to the first one (which most people seem to think is best, personally, I preferred part 2, but anyway...).  However, if you REALLY like the Critters and want to see more of them, you can try this – it’s the sort of film where you can surf the net and watch it at the same time and still miss much.  Plus, did I mention it had baby-faced Leo in it?  He’s being chased my fur-balls – c’mon, that’s got to be worth watching, right?

5/10 a hard trek, a bit like unicycling to Mordor and back