In RFMC’s “All Dolled Up” series, I’m taking my first journey through the seven original films, one reboot film and one TV series of the “Child’s Play/Chucky” franchise. Spoilers follow.
Overall impressions
I kind of feel sorry for “Child’s Play” (2019), which is appropriate since I kind of feel sorry for Chucky (voiced by Mark Hamill), who features in a “Mice and Men”-meets-HAL-9000 tale of a robot that can’t understand the nuances of right and wrong.
As the first “Child’s Play” is one of the few IPs owned by Orion, whose logo was more prominent back in the day, they decided to cash in. But it would’ve been better if the movie was known as “Buddi” (the new name for the Good Guy dolls). Every time the doll is called Chucky, I’m like “Oh yeah, this is technically a ‘Chucky’ film.”
“Child’s Play” (2019)
Director: Lars Klevberg
Writers: Tyler Burton Smith
Stars: Aubrey Plaza, Brian Tyree Henry, Gabriel Bateman
The pathos of Chucky’s plight mixes uneasily with his violence, and the violence itself is an uneasy mix, as he sometimes goes after people who deserve it and sometimes after totally innocent people, always thinking he’s defending his tween “best friend” Andy (Gabriel Bateman). Though the film doesn’t go as far as it could with its surveillance-culture commentary, it stands out from the O.G. enough that it’s not bad as a one-off curiosity.
Outsider status
A hearing-impaired person. Andy wears a hearing aid, but it doesn’t come into play much, except when one semi-friend turns on him and uses his disability as an insult. And, of course, Andy is the classic “person who knows what’s going on but no one believes him.”
Comedy quotient
80 percent horror, 20 percent comedy. TV comedy veterans Aubrey Plaza, as Andy’s mom Karen, and Brian Tyree Henry, as good cop Mike down the hall, are in the cast, but the film doesn’t go too much for laughs.
Magic and the dolls
The remake trades out the supernatural for sci-fi, choosing to explore the modern but rather common concept of the dangers of robot sentience via Buddi, who is essentially Alexa (able to control all a home’s linked devices) in the form of a kid’s doll.
Andy’s Buddi doll, whose factory safety settings are turned off by a disgruntled worker in the prolog, and who looks less cute than the original films’ model, names himself Chucky. Then he’s reprogrammed and adopted by another kid, who names him Chode. The Buddi 2 line launches in the grand finale, featuring different hair and skin colors, plus a version that’s a bear.
Special effects
The ugliness of the Buddi doll (which now vaguely resembles the Michael Myers mask, probably a coincidence), combined with Hamill’s performance, draws sympathy in some scenes, though it’s not consistent. And the gore is effective in the rare-but-showcased kill scenes.
Best kill
Chucky goes after Karen’s on-the-nose version of a boyfriend who the son (and viewer) sees is awful but the mom for some reason doesn’t notice. Shane (David James Lewis) has a string of Christmas lights wrapped around him, which is sucked up by a runaway roto-tiller. You can probably imagine how it turns out.
Best one-liner
“F***en millennials!” Mike is irked by Andy and his friends, who are clearly younger than the millennial generation.
References and meta commentary
The film updates “Of Mice and Men” with a robot rather than a mentally challenged person. It’s to the movie’s credit that it reimagines the “Child’s Play” premise rather than doing a straight remake, although it reuses the O.G. character names and can’t resist repurposing the “This is the end” line.
A toy car says “Dead or alive, you’re coming with me,” a reference to another Orion property, “RoboCop.”
Continuity and predictions
As Orion only has the rights to remake the 1988 original, this was destined to be a one-and-done. They would’ve been better off launching a similar but technically new “Buddi” franchise (although maybe that would get them into a gray area of copyright law). Instead, the “M3gan” franchise did the franchise play, copying the idea of a friendly robot Alexa a few years later and following with a sequel.