After writing the first four Child's Play movies Don Mancini returns to the series and makes his directorial debut for this fifth go around that brings back everyone's favourite killer doll couple Chucky (Brad Dourif) and Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly) for more murdering hijinks.

Like Wes Craven's New Nightmare, Seed Of Chucky decides to blend fiction and fact for its story as Tilly plays herself as a diva-like washed-up actress who's starring in the latest Chucky instalment, "Chucky Goes Psycho". She's constantly complaining about her career even deciding to audition for rapper Redman's film based on the Virgin Mary. But things are about to get a whole lot worse when Chucky and Tiffany are resurrected by their son Glen (voiced by Billy Boyd) who's come all the way from England to hunt down his real parents (they all have "Made In Japan" stamped on their wrists, they must be family!).

From there it's all sorts of in-jokes, pokes at Hollywood (Tilly constantly makes fun of herself), and even a few bloody deaths (there's an impressive decapitation and some other gorily fun moments) as this latest instalment continues the series trend of not taking itself at all seriously.

The actors are having a ball (Dourif is still the man after all these years) and there's a lot of entertainingly amusing moments; but this somehow feels a little less inspired than Bride Of Chucky did and I could have, quite frankly, done without the Glen doll completely as it adds nothing to the movie but a so-so subplot.

But if you're a fan of the series this is certainly a more enjoyable time than the first two sequels - I just wish there would've been more killing mayhem and a bit less of the "aren't we clever?" jokes. It's an amusing ride, for sure, but it just seems to be missing an extra "oomph" to make it great.

Cult director John Waters steps in front of the camera again (like he did in Blood Feast 2) for a dopey turn as a paparazzi.

Review based on the unrated version which adds about two minutes of footage deemed to "extreme" for theatres (though it's really not). (Chris Hartley, 11/16/04; DVD 06/07/05)

Directed By: Don Mancini.
Written By: Don Mancini.

Starring: Jennifer Tilly, Redman, Hannah Spearritt, Steve Lawton.

Picture Ratio: 1.85:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: Pristine is the only word you could use to describe the picture here. The transfer looks just awesome with no noticeable flaws and great clarity - of course you'd expect that from a movie that was in theatres a mere six months ago.

Extras: Universal delivers (no, that wasn't a pun) on the special features here and while a few of them are totally throwaway there's more than enough for fans of the series to chew on.

There's cast/crew bios, the amusing teaser trailer, a regular trailer, storyboard to film comparisons for five scenes (they amazing stick fairly close to the drawings), a pointless "FuZion Up Close" snippet, a readable version of Jennifer Tilly's shooting diary, a sketch of Tilly on the Tonight Show, a decent "making of" featurette than runs 19 minutes, two passable sketches with Chucky (one "Family Hell-iday" with them watching slides of their vacation, the other "Heeeere's Chucky!" an interview piece), a deleted scene with optional commentary (the fact of the matter here is the scene that was supposed to follow this one sounds much more interesting, but wasn't filmed).

There's also the pop-up text trivia of "Chucky's Insider Facts" you can turn on while watching the movie and two commentary tracks which both manage to be decent listens one with Mancini and Tilly, the other with Mancini and head puppeteer Tony Gardner.