Au Pair 3: Adventure in Paradise

Thanks for writing in. I'm the creator of the Au Pair "trilogy" and writer of all three films. People often ask me what happened to this third movie, why it fell so short of the first two. I've held my tongue for quite a while now, but I think these queries and comments deserve an explanation. Whereas Au Pair and Au Pair II were shot from my and Cheryl's script, this third time out, after I had written a truly fun, lovely sequel that properly caught up with the Caldwells and flowed from the previous two plot-lines (and prompted the director and stars of the first two to return), an unwise, unscrupulous executive at the network opted to rewrite the script herself, just prior to production. She did this without telling me, our stars or our director -- and, I discovered, without ever having even watched the first two films! She then hacked the budget and shooting schedule way down as "an experiment" till AP3 became just a difficult and ludicrous exercise for all involved. Scant bits of my plot, my scenes and dialogue remain thanks to our stars' and director's insistence, but virtually everything cogent, fun and heartfelt was mindlessly butchered out. I'm still saddled with the writing credit, which is how it goes I suppose. The truly difficult part for me is that the many, many fans of the first two Au Pairs were shorted. That exec is now gone from the network -- and so, I'm afraid, is the chance for a correct and satisfying conclusion to these widely beloved films.

I was actually anticipating the release of this movie when I found out they managed to get all of the original cast members from the first two movies. The main stars, anyway. Usually on the 2nd sequel to movies, it's a completely different cast, but not this one. Anyway, onto the movie itself. I was very disappointed. Oliver's son graduates from high school and his daughter is on break from college and he wants to take the whole family on a trip to spend time together, but the kids want to go off and do their own thing rather than spend any time with their father and step-mother. I especially didn't like them having Katie fall in love with some guy she had never even met before. The first 2 movies were much better than this one. Just like other movies that have had too many sequels, this one should have stopped at 2. If they wanted to make a third one, they should have done it a year or two after the second one and not 8 years after the second movie.

Anyone expecting this to be even remotely "cute" or have any substance even close to the originals will be sorely disappointed! The plot was so thin and non-existent you could fit it on the head of a pin. 2 hours of my life I will never get back. The only redeeming quality of this movie is if you like seeing all the original cast members. Assuming they even read the script beforehand I'm shocked they were even able to get all the original cast together for this sub-par waste of airtime. What a joke of a movie compared to the previous ones. There are no real notable moments in this movie and the first hour could have literally been deleted as watching paint dry would be more exciting. In fact nothing of any substance at all happens until the last 15min. or so. At least even the worst of made-for-TV movies are "cute" on some level.