Rish Outfield's reviews
Almost immediately, I knew that this was gonna be a cruddy movie. And I turned out to be right. It ranges from extraordinarily lame to alright, then quickly back.
A little kid with a funny name (at one point, he's watching a Rambo cartoon) has a traumatic experience involving a killer toy and now he doesn't talk. His mother has to protect him from whoever is responsible for the killer toys. . .or something like that.
The child actor wasn't awful (but then, he had no lines), and the woman who played his mother wasn't bad, either. The woman who played the lead in the fourth film appears, as does Conan Yuzna. Thank God he is maimed, though. Oh yeah, Clint Howard appears for about a second, too. It was hard to find somebody to like, though, except for Mickey Rooney, who I liked just for nostalgia's sake. Like the last segment, this film isn't connected to the other four (except for being based around the holidays and featuring a couple of the same actors), and though it wasn't my cup of tea, a couple of people I've talked to really liked it. I was annoyed by the constant cute attempts to be literary (Joe Petto and his robotic son Pino, the babysitter is reading Pinocchio, any more clues, kids?), but I usually am. With killer toys roaming around, you'd think Charles Band would be all over this film. The film was somewhat funny, but never intentionally. It was really predictable (except for who the killer was) and I found it dreadfully lame. And lamely dreadful. In fact, I can't really think of more to say about it.
Look, even though it wasn't a good movie, there's no reason why the series has to end. Making these stand-alone X-mas flicks can produce a wide variety of different stories and results, especially since one man's Children of the Damned is another man's Children of the Corn.
Wait a minute, did that make sense?

The tyranist's thoughts
Why don't people trust their audiences? Why do they think that they have to provide obvious hints too early in movies? Do they think they're being clever? Do they think that I'm going to clap my hand over my mouth and say, "Oh."
I really thought that the story had potential. The fact that I understood how the plot would work out from the first moments of the film didn't help, but there is something in there. You see, I like science fiction and, being a longtime Philip K. Dick fan, I really like stories in which the line between humanity and what we build is blurred. The problem here is that they engaged a few bad actors, wrote a script that should have been doctored a little and chose to spend a lot of time focusing on a child actor who had no lines (until the end and at that point his lines were utterly unforgivable) and liked to watch people have sex. There's a better story here, I promise.
While I didn't completely dislike the show, I didn't fall in love with it either. I'd have to say that it is pretty average and, unfortunately, forgettable. Having seen it once, I doubt that it will ever cross my mind again. So if you liked A.I. there's a little bit here for you, but otherwise only completists trying to finish the series should bother.