Seed of Chucky
The
most fascinating thing about Seed of Chucky is the fact that it isn't
even the first time two former Oscar-nominated actors played a couple of
murderous dolls. No, Brad Dourif (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)
and Jennifer Tilly (Bullets Over Broadway) had already voiced the
roles of Chucky the killer doll and his femme fatale love interest Tiffany
in the last film of this series; Bride of Chucky in 1999.
Not only does she play the voice of the doll,
Jennifer Tilly also has a good-natured lark poking fun at her image, playing
herself. Well, not exactly herself, but a slightly
over-the-hill actress named Jennifer Tilly who is more than willing to sleep
around for good parts that end up going to Julia Roberts, anyway. She
is whiny, needy, constantly scarfing hidden food and not sure exactly how
she fell off the A-list. Still, she keeps trying to claw her way back
to the top, currently courting rapper Redman to play Mary Magdelene in his
new hip-hop opus on the life of Jesus. (As her assistant points out,
the whole idea with sleeping with someone to get to play the Virgin Mary may
be cause for damnation.) She is also being harassed by a
heartless paparazzo (cult director John Waters) who is obsessed with finding
dirt on her.
If this were the total thrust of the movie, it would be a lot more
interesting than Seed of Chucky ends up being. Unfortunately, it's not called
Seed of Tilly. The main character is still the demon spawn toy in the
fifth film of this franchise, dating back to Child's Play in 1988.
The series has never been straight horror, in fact it's been a long time
since it could be called scary at all. It has always had a certain
amount of comedy to it – which is inevitable when you have a premise about
a doll which has been possessed by the spirit of a serial killer.
The
film starts in London, where an odd-looking doll (voiced by Billy Boyd of
The Lord of the Rings) is being used as a
ventriloquist's dummy. The doll is alive, confused, overly
sensitive and horrified by the fact that he keeps having dreams of murder.
He finally thinks that he has found his parents when he sees an
entertainment report of a film being made about the murderous dolls Chucky
and Tiffany. So he ships himself to Hollywood to find his family.
In the
meantime, the evil souls of Chucky and Tiffany has been turned off when they
killed each other at the end of the last film, so
that they are literally just props in their own film. When the funny
looking doll finds them, he reawakens them, allowing
the two to return to their baser instincts. Then he introduces himself
as their child, and while there is no real proof of this for anyone, they
take it in and teach it the family business.
I say
"it" because they have a huge disagreement as to whether it is a boy or a
girl, even though the audience had no doubt that it was a boy until they
have this
fight. Chucky calls the doll Glen, Tiffany calls it Glenda.
(Nice Edward D. Wood, Jr. reference, though it seems like they really had to
strain to get to that little in-joke.) As his parents get to know the
little spawn, even they are a bit disturbed by its quirks. Tiffany
suddenly decides they have to give up killing because they are parents,
Chucky doesn't want to, leading to a lot of sitcom funny arguments between
Chucky and his bride.
The
comic parts make for an odd mix with the extreme cartoon gore of the
murders. Even though the killings are meant to be humorous, you can't
help but think that it often isn't so much funny or even scary as it is disgusting. However, even when Seed of Chucky
does hit the mark as a satire of the slasher genre, it only lasts for so
long. Then you remember that you're watching walking, talking,
disembowelling dolls. Every time you watch them emoting and waving their
chubby little plastic hands, hopping homicidally onto people five times
their size or gazing with menace with their cold plastic eyes you have to
put yourself into one of two camps – the people who buy into the whole
thing or the ones
who feel a little silly watching murderous play toys. Since
writer-director Don Mancini has made an entire career out of revisiting this
well for over fifteen years, obviously there are a lot of people who like it. I'm
afraid I'm in the second group, though.
(11/04)
Jay S.
Jacobs
Copyright ©2004 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved.
Posted: June 3, 2005.
