Sonic the Hedgehog review

How can a movie be both solid and disappointing?

Honestly, it’s a fine movie. Interesting. Entertaining. It simply fails to meet the potential of the subject matter.

The movie opens in an environment reminiscent of 2D (or good) Sonic level design, and honestly, it’s a tease of what the movie could have been instead of “let’s put Sonic with a bunch of humans.”

“Cartoony character goes to the real world for some reason” is more than a cliche at this point; it’s a genre. Did Sonic the Hedgehog really need to crib from Smurfs? (though at least Sonic didn’t double down on tired movie tropes by also taking place in New York City, a.k.a. the only municipality on Earth.) It just screams, “I don’t know what to do with this,” or, “I have no faith this established and popular brand will sell if it isn’t grounded in something even more familiar.” In either case, a reasonable response would be, “If so, is it even worth doing in the first place?”

The writers and set designers did their part to slip in as many references to the Sonic games and expanded universe as they could. I’d probably have to watch a few times to even hope to find them all. Lucky for all of us, the Sanik cameo is unmissable.

Sonic is appropriately manic, funny and (when he applies himself) clever. His motivations are thought out, understandable and clearly communicated, but they mostly factor into the distinctly not-Sonic-like parts of the movie.

A good third of the movie is still about the fastest thing alive riding around in a truck. When he does move, though, it’s pretty impressive, even in a post-Fox!Quicksilver world. It’s almost worth the price of admission just to watch those scenes alone.

As a version of Robotnik from before the doctor got famous, Jim Carey brings a suitably larger-than-life personality, voice, and gesticulation to the role. While he does look noticeably older than he did in the 90s (funny what 20-30 years can do to a person) but has no trouble slipping in to the kid-friendly insanity that made him bank all those years ago with The Mask and Ace Ventura (I would argue his acting in Batman Forever was very damn much not kid-friendly).

The rest of the characters don’t possess much complexity, but they were directed well and give a professional effort. I’m sure you weren’t expecting the best supporting character in a Sonic the Hedgehog movie to be the sister-in-law of Sonic’s human friend, but it’s 2020. Up is down, night is day, dogs and cats are living together. Why not this, too?

The movie’s running time is surprisingly lean, and it leads me to believe that some scenes were dropped in order to avoid redoing any CG they possibly could avoid.

And, for the curious, “Gangsta’s Paradise,” is nowhere to be found on the soundtrack. And thank goodness, because it’s completely out of place tonally. Still, it probably wasn’t cheap to license, especially to only use it for one trailer.

Verdict: Go for it (4/5). It has, in my opinion, huge setting issues and pretty weak integration of product placement, but it’s not a bad movie overall.