#SEED OF CHUCKY MOVIE#
#SEED OF CHUCKY SERIES#

You half expect Gruden himself to appear, he’s been described so often as a Chucky look-alike.

#SEED OF CHUCKY MOVIE#

There are references to everything from Martha Stewart and Britney Spears to “The Shining” and “Chinatown.” Ryan Seacrest blares from a clock radio and an “Access Hollywood” correspondent reports from the movie set. Rapper Redman also shows up and plays himself the running joke with him is that the co-star of the movie “How High” is planning to direct his own movie, about the Virgin Mary, in which Tilly the sex kitten is dying to play the lead. Tilly - who provides the voice of Chucky’s wife, Tiffany, and starred in “Bride of Chucky” six years ago - plays herself here in a movie-within-the-movie: a big-screen rendering of the Chucky urban legend, titled “Chucky Goes Psycho.” One need only witness the presence of camp director John Waters, playing a paparazzo who stalks camp queen Jennifer Tilly, to recognize the direction we’re headed. Which is important, because he’s written or co-written every single Chucky movie.This time, though, Don Mancini (who has written all the Chucky movies and makes his directorial debut) dives into deep camp, cramming the screen with pop culture references and Hollywood in-jokes. Director Don Mancini is even among them, citing it as his personal favorite of the franchise. Seed might be the least loved sequel in its franchise, but it does have some passionate fans. While it’s still a mess and completely uneven, that aspect shines clear and works wonderfully. Everything is dealt with bluntly, nothing is left to be explored or questioned. There’s nothing under the surface in Seed of Chucky. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 gained a gay following for having so many clear homoerotic undertones. Even if their struggles with being a boy or girl are tied into a dissociative identity disorder, they’re still all aspects of one individual. While there are so many things going on in it that are weird and bizarre and completely goofy, Glen’s journey of self-discovery is surprisingly earnest. Seed of Chucky has to be commended for its attempt at that. It’s amazing that any slasher franchise would devote a whole sequel to questioning identity, sexuality and gender. They ultimately work better than the Hollywood stuff, which is very funny in places, but also really drags on and on. That’s an amazingly absurd concept and those moments between Chucky and Tiffany, those scenes of “falling off the wagon,” those are the bits that truly sell Seed of Chucky. The very fact that we’ve got a movie where Chucky is attempting to hang up the knife in order to be a better parent is hilarious. I’m sure nobody was thinking of that when they were scrambling to get the film done on schedule with the money they had, but it does kind of benefit the final product. For it to be the John Waters version of Chucky, it almost would have been a mistake if it had too high of a budget and too many resources to work with. It’s also the cheapest of the franchise and isn’t really great at hiding that fact. It’s so over-the-top that people just found it alienating. Each Child’s Play sequel got more comedic until Bride launched into a full-blown horror comedy. It plays up a sense of absurdity that had gradually been building over time. Sure, Seed of Chucky can be grating, but there are also moments that are genuinely funny.

At this point, though, the fact that there are now three killer dolls in the mix allows for everything else to be heightened as well.

#SEED OF CHUCKY SERIES#

When the series started, everything had to be more grounded to sell the believability of the killer doll. We’ve got Jennifer Tilly playing herself now, with a hilarious subplot about auditioning for the role of the Virgin Mary that gets cut too short.ĭropping Chucky-and family-in the middle of Hollywood is a great way to explore its ridiculous, exploitative, ugly but darkly amusing side, because we’re already seeing it through a ridiculous lens. Seed just keeps moving on from one thing to the next without a care in the world, which is both frustrating and respectable. Some of the great ideas inherent in that examination of Hollywood are just dealt with too quickly. But none of these jokes have anything to do with one another, so it gets distracting. It gets muddled, I’ll admit, bogged down by jokes about Hollywood and jokes about parenting and the usual jokes about being a mass-murdering doll.

All of that is wrapped up in an attempt to satirize Hollywood and the entire movie business, which is where the film gets a little lost.

Seed of chucky