3 out of 5

Directed by: Ronny Yu

It’s rough around the edges, but ‘Bride of Chucky’ is a successful vehicle for launching the franchise (albeit slowly) into a slightly more self-aware genre, though this could also be seen as the mark of a series that straddled the changes in 80s / 90s / 00s horror.  While CP3 is mostly looked down upon, it’s actually a similar attempt at navigating a limited idea elsewhere; ‘Bride’ has its same mish-mash feel until series scribe Don Mancini gets all his characters where he wants them, then unleashing a nice overkill vibe for the last third of the film, energetically captured by director Yu.  There’s no real surprise regarding the new twist here, as it’s essentially in the title: a female Chucky, or Tiffany, voiced by Jennifer Tilly.  But, of course, it takes time to get there, and to make it make sense for the duo to go on a killing spree.  To this extent, Mancini decides to play even faster and looser with logic than in CP3, forgoing any real limitations on this voodoo biz and giving Chucky and Tiffany plenty of mobility and killability so that they remain menacing little monsters.  And a larger budget or better technology suits those needs well: Kevin Yagher, who’s worked on all of the film, serves as coordinator for our puppets; BoC gives them plenty of moments to shine and the facial and body movements are pretty impressive.  …Especially when the film begins to hilariously push some taste boundaries in its final portion, which is when the film briefly becomes awesome, fully embracing the ridiculousness – giving Dourif plenty of great lines – and going for broke in some pretty surprising ways for 1998.  It does peter out at the end a bit, stretching things on tiredly to meet 90 minutes, but it’s a fair trade for the final gag.  Overall uneven, but some key highlights make this an exciting update to the series.