Child's Play 3 Reviews

There are only so many ways that a killer doll can attack someone, but at least the makers of CHILD'S PLAY 3, the latest Chucky chopfest, have given their sequel a new setting and focus. It's been eight years since CHILD'S PLAY 2 ended, and Play Pals executive Sullivan (Peter Haskell) decides that the bad publicity has blown over and it's time to put the Good Guy dolls back in production. First off the assembly line, of course, is another doll possessed by the spirit of the evil Charles Lee Ray (the voice of Brad Dourif); the title sequence, in which blood and plastic swirl together behind the credits to form the diminutive demon, is one of the best parts of the movie. There's also a fairly effective sequence early on in which Chucky kills Sullivan with his own toys, before the evil doll discovers that his old target Andy Barclay (Justin Whalin) is now a teenager in a military academy. So Chucky mails himself off to the school, only for the package to be intercepted by a young black cadet named Tyler (Jeremy Sylvers), who becomes the new potential recipient of Ray's murderous soul. It's never explained how Chucky manages to package himself and place a mailing label on the outside, but never mind. The change in locale from the previous CHILD'S PLAY films is a welcome one, and the military milieu allows returning writer Don Mancini to set up plenty of diverse opportunities for Chucky to cause mayhem. It's a shame, then, that the characters who populate the scenario are largely stock. Andy is befriended by tough-talking girl cadet DeSilva (the good, feisty Perrey Reeves), tormented by the bullying Shelton (Travis Fine), and given stern "you gotta be a man" lectures by the school's commanding officer. Much of the material surrounding Chucky's havoc is overly familiar, and the horror tactics by now have succumbed to predictability. A large part of the film's midsection is spent maneuvering the expendable characters into situations where Chucky can strike at them, and it's quite clear from the outset who's going to live, who's going to die and who's going to deliver the final coup de grace to the pint-size terror. Director Jack Bender films all this with enough style that CHILD'S PLAY 3 never becomes overly boring or tedious, and there's some nicely timed tension and comic bits scattered throughout. Kevin Yagher's effects work is expert, Andrew Robinson has a funny supporting turn as Sergeant Botnick, the sadistic barber, and the film dodges potential racism by rarely emphasizing that Chucky's new target is black (aside from the doll's gratuitous line, "Just think, Chucky's gonna be a bro!") The movie only really picks up for the climax, though, when the routine academy war games turn nasty after Chucky loads the guns with real bullets. The action then switches to a nearby carnival for the climactic showdown. There's a terrific, well-sustained final confrontation in a huge rollercoaster-cum-haunted-house ride, but the key to these scenes is that it's here that Tyler finally realizes that the doll that's been so friendly to him is really up to no good. It's kind of hard to belive that a kid in military school would be as accepting of a talking doll as Tyler initially is, and having Chucky mostly terrorize teens and adults in the first two-thirds kills the primal fear that fueled the original, that of a child's toys murderously turning on him. Chucky is scarier when he's picking on people his own size. (Violence, profanity.)