Everyone's favourite plastic slasher doll, Chucky (voiced by Brad Dourif), returns for a fifth instalment of this popular horror series. Apparently Chucky and his equally murderous bride, Tiffany (voiced by Jennifer Tilly), had a child, which has grown up in a cage as part of a heavy-metal ventriloquist act in England. Eventually it (one never learns its exact gender) escapes to Los Angeles to revive mom and pop, whose doll corpses are being used for a movie based on their previous killing spree. Jennifer Tilly shows up as herself, and she's great--hamming it up as a floozy actress so desperate for the part in rapper Redman's latest film that she lures him home for a casting couch tryst, with hilarious (and fatal) results. Meanwhile, the child of Chucky is horrified by the violent murders its parents are so fond of committing and, with a little help from a 12-step book, tries to help them kick the homicide habit. Of course it's hard when there are so many deserving targets around, including John Waters as a scuzzy paparazzi. In sum, this is one crazy sequel; it's got a refreshing lack of morals, a light heart, and a clever script with a lot of great insider jokes for buffs. The gore is extreme though, including eviscerations, beheadings, melting flesh, and other raunchy business that makes its R rating well-earned (no true Chucky fan would have it any other way, of course). Rappers Eminem and Big Pun contributed tracks to the score.
