YMMV / Child's Play 3

• Awesome Music: The title theme, done by keyboardist Cory Lerios and composer John D'Andrea.
• Designated Villain: Mr. Sullivan is set up to be an Asshole Victim for restarting the Good Guy line and callously dismissing Andy's fears. But unlike, say, Omni Consumer Products or the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, Play Pals has no moral nor practical reason not to continue its business. They're not responsible for Chucky's rampage, and as far Mr. Sullivan knows Andy really is just a crazy kid who slandered his product.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Whitehurst is a loveable nerd who, despite being bullied by the others, saves their lives when the chips are down.
  • Sergeant Botnick manages to be one of the more memorable characters in the movie, thanks to Andrew Robinson giving him an overly enthusiastic performance as a barber too enamored with his job and a cheesy one-liner Chucky flips on him during his death scene.
• Heartwarming Moments: De Silva's relationship with Andy. It's nice to see someone care about him after the first two films.
• Retroactive Recognition: Universal Studios fans may recognize Matthew Walker, who played Major Ellis in this film, as the host of Disaster!.
• The Scrappy: Tyler is a spoiled Military Brat who knows Chucky is alive, believes everything he says (which doesn't make sense considering he's 8 and a half according to a Deleted Scene), ignores Andy's warnings about him, and takes almost the whole film to realize that Chucky's bad news. As a result, audience members found most of his scenes tedious and frustrating.
• Sequelitis: 3 is the lowest-grossing and lowest-scoring film in the series, as well as an Old Shame of Don Mancini and Brad Dourif. Most critiques cite the unpolished writing and direction, largely dull or unlikeable characters, odd setting and casting decisions, similarities to the previous film and abrupt change in tone as faults. Most of these were results of the film's suffocating 9-month schedule forced onto it. That being said, 3 does have a cult following of fans who prefer the original trilogy and dislike where the series would head.
• Stoic Woobie: Made much more explicit in the novelization, but Andy Barclay has been through hell since we first saw him as a goofy six year old boy making his mom breakfast in the first Child's Play.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Whitehurst Jumping on a Grenade to save everyone, even his tormentors. Not only is he an Ensemble Dark Horse, selfless acts like these are rare in the series' Crapsack World - and he pays quite the price for it.
  • The garbage man dies a slow, painful death just because he thought someone fell into the trash compactor and decided to help. It's another rare case where a victim in this series isn't a Hate Sink.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: This film works better as a teen drama set in a war camp, but it's weighed down by the film's slasher elements.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • Although some of the cosmetics deteriorate towards the end, Chucky's animatronic effects are as good as ever, with the facial expressions, hand movements and mouth following the lip-sync of Dourif's lines being perfected upon.
  • Special mention goes to the Title Sequence which shows beautiful reversed footage of Chucky melting, making it look like a Pulling Himself Together sequence.
• The Woobie: Whitehurst, a wimpy Butt-Monkey constantly bullied by others.

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