You could probably count the number of people who were eagerly awaiting another "Child's Play" sequel on your hands, and that includes movie studio executives. So, evidently that's who we should blame for "Bride of Chucky."
A sure-fire candidate for the year's worst film, the sickeningly gory and misbegotten horror/comedy, attempts to cross-breed the killer-doll concept with "The Bride of Frankenstein" and "Natural Born Killers." But it lacks even the slightest smidgen of cleverness of the former and is far more explicit and exploitative than the latter.
Even worse, this witless splatter film is so poorly acted and badly executed that it almost makes its predecessors look good by comparison (notice I said almost, though).
The title character is Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly), former girlfriend of deceased serial killer Charles Lee Ray, whose soul was reborn in the body of a seemingly harmless Chucky doll, which went on a murder spree before being dispatched (in the third "Child's Play" film).
She makes the mistake of magically reviving the diminutive demon, who quickly kills her as well. But her soul is transferred to a female doll, who joins him in his quest to find an amulet that will restore them to human form.
Their unwilling but unwitting accomplices are teenagers Jesse (Nick Stabile) and Jade (Katherine Heigl), lovers who are on the run from her tyrannical police chief uncle (John Ritter). Also unknown to the teens, Chucky and Tiffany are planning to possess their bodies once they retrieve the talisman.
As mentioned, the acting is extremely amateurish. Both Tilly and Ritter are awful, and the one-liners that Brad Dourif (reprising his voice-only role as Chucky) is given are obnoxious and irritating.
Of course, it doesn't help that the script (by "Child's Play" creator Don Mancini) is loaded with awful puns and cultural references, and that director Ronny Yu ("Warriors of Virtue") doesn't have a clue what to do with this mess.
"Bride of Chucky" is rated R for violent knife attacks and gunplay, gruesome makeup effects and gore, profanity, vulgar gags and use of crude slang terms, simulated sex (including a doll coupling!), partial nudity (Tilly's overly revealing outfits) and drug use (pot smoking).