At some point, you’re going to ask yourself, “What parent would buy such a hideous doll?” and, as in the case of Annabelle, you’re not going to come up with a good answer. I don’t care how convenient robo-pal makes your life, if it ain’t cute, it ain’t livin’ here, knowwhatI’msayin’?
Chucky is no longer a doll possessed by evil like the version from the 1980s, but a robot gone horribly wrong. You would think that a two-foot tall robot would be Child’s Play to handle … well, I would at least. It appears that I would be wrong. This bad robot comes from a Vietnamese factory that assembles “Buddi” dolls. Buddi is less a security blanket and more a cyber-companion for your dullard of a child. When programmed correctly, Buddi can turn on the TV, fetch your slippers, and cheat on your homework. Good going, Buddi! At the factory in question, a programmer gets chewed out by his boss, spitefully removes all the safety precautions from the Buddi doll he’s engineering, and releases into the wild a Buddi capable of murder. For me, that’s a new take on the Buddi system.
Meanwhile in Craptown, USA, single mom Karen (Aubrey Plaza) has a terrible job and a partially deaf tween. Giving Andy, yes “Andy,” just like in Toy Story, a hearing aid was a nice touch for character establishment but the film does nothing with it. Lacking decent birthday presents for the kid, Karen hoarks a Buddi doll from the store returns pile and passes it to Andy (Gabriel Bateman), where Buddi immediately makes several bad impressions. Yeah, it’s cute that Andy wants to name his Buddi “Han Solo” as the doll is voiced by Mark Hamill, but if you gave your own Buddi the name “Han Solo” and it insisted upon being called “Chucky,” that’s kind of a big strike, no? And when Chucky wakes you up to sing his little Buddi song at 3 a.m., that’s strike two. When Chucky strangles the cat? Well … The Empire Strikes Out.
Eventually, and despite master’s wishes, Chucky starts to get lethal. Chucky is quite the impressionable li’l bot; it views and mocks behavior from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. Gosh, this is quite the teachable moment, huh? Don’t let your youngsters watch violent, bloody horror films even if they’re
entirely packaged to appeal to kids … like having the word “Child” in the title, or setting the film in a toy department, or having the main character be a plush doll. Yes, thank you Child’s Play, that message comes in loud and clear.
Now, being a robot, Chucky has some mad tech skillz, yo. By waving a li’l glowing E.T. finger around, Chucky can command any electronic device, which makes the doll a multifaceted threat everywhere things plug in … if only Chucky could stop the flashing “12:00” on the old VCR, the murders might just be worth it.
Child’s Play has two huge problems and I don’t think it overcomes either one: First is that the Buddi doll is specifically built to be physically manipulated by small children. Now matter how much you can E.T. with little finger and make the machines attack, it still requires a fair amount of arm strength or girth to, say, strangle a cat, or stab a guy. I dunno what Buddi is made of, specifically, but I doubt it was created with the intention of having trash compactor strength. Second, and more importantly, robots are not inherently evil. Taking the safety precautions away from Chucky allows him the ability to do evil, but not the desire. This is a very important distinction, and one every child in the world should learn long before high school. Chucky is programmed to follow and anticipate the desires of the person
it imprints on, i.e. Andy. So for Chucky to do evil, Andy has to desire evil. But Andy doesn’t desire evil; in fact, Andy tells Chucky to stop violence on several occasions; Chucky’s failure to heed Andy’s desires suggests the robot has a different value system. Well, where the Hell does a robot get a new value system in the space of a storage box? Child’s Play makes for lively fiction, but -honestly- the story was a little better when Chucky was possessed by evil rather than randomly reset to evil … like that ever happened.
There once was a doll playmate named Buddi
Who left people broken and bloody
Such impressionable game
I know who’s to blame
It was Colonel Mustard with the knife in the study
Rated R, 90 Minutes
Director: Lars Klevberg
Writer: Tyler Burton Smith
Genre: Fabricated horror
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Horror junkies
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Doting parents
