Sonic moves fast within a slow film
Hallelujah! "Sonic The Hedgehog" is not a dumpster fire, but that doesn't mean it's a memorable picture. For what it's worth, "Sonic" is a mildly enjoyable romp that took a hardly adaptable source into a live-action film that the whole family can enjoy. Despite Sonic's incredible speed, the movie's script felt sluggish at times, pulling me out of the film, hoping for it to end since it doesn't have anywhere to go. The human characters are mostly flat caricatures taken from a screenwriting 1.0.1 course on how to give someone a distinct personality. It's nothing of a cardinal sin, but something so familiar that it lingers on being frustrating at times.
Sonic gets pulled into our world from his own because his owl mom or something like that gets killed by a bunch of little gremlins that carry around bows. I didn't understand what happened in the first scene, nor did I care. Before you stop me claiming I know nothing of the games, let me say that I grew up like most thirty-some-year-old manbabies playing Sega Genesis. I'm well aware of all the references in the movie. The owl lady I don't remotely recall from the games, so her being Sonic's nonbiological mother confused me more than the plotholes I let go from this movie since it is, after all, made for kids. With his bag of magical rings, Sonic transports himself to earth, spending the majority of his younger years by himself living in a secret cave, not wanting to scare the humans with the discovery of his existence. Eventually, Sonic's very power ignites an EMP blackout in his unofficial hometown of Green Hill Montana. We all get the green hill reference. The government sends Dr. Ivo Robotnik (Jim Carrey) to investigate the source of the blackout. From here, as you can guess, the film is a cat and mouse chase between Sonic and Robotnick. Along the way, Sonic meets a new friend, Officer Tom Wachowski, the kindest cop who could only ever really exist in the fictional world of a children's movie.
The chemistry between Sonic and Tom, in particular, is where the film didn't work for me. It had nothing to do with either of the actors or voice performances. The problem was more along the line of how uninteresting Tom is. He's far too much of a happy go lucky guy where there's anything for me to cling on to with him. What's his character flaw other than wanting to do more cop work in a town where there is none? While Ben Schwartz does the job right in voicing Sonic, screenwriters Patrick Casey and Josh Miller's constant need for the character to be intentionally annoying, just made the Sega mascot unbearable to watch at times. I wanted him to shut up just as much as the other characters surrounding him did. In fairness, Sonic's persona was always a bit too generically cute for me, so perhaps that critique is just my own age-old bias. With Shwartz and Marsden having to carry the picture for the majority of its running time, I couldn't help but check my watch on multiple occasions. The most unfortunate thing was there were far more interesting characters in the film that could have been the human lead alongside Sonic that would have rendered a more resonant picture. I guess I can only dream of a Sonic and Crazy Carl sequel one day.
To keep the charisma up is Jim Carrey being as Jim Carrey as Jim Carrey can be. It's been quite some time where I've seen a director let loose and let Carrey be himself on set. There's something enigmatically drawing about Carrey's on-screen looney tunes persona that only someone of his hyperactive caliber can produce. If you're familiar with Dr. Robotnic, then you'd know Jim Carrey is the perfect comedic actor to play the role of a frothing at the mouth goofball villain. Sadly there isn't enough to the character of Robotnik to hold my interest other than a couple of slight chuckles. If you're not a fan of Carrey's zany presence, then you'll be heading for the exits pretty soon when the film reaches its twenty-minute mark. Everyone else in the cast seems like cookie-cutter characters. There's the supportive free-spirited girlfriend, an annoying yelling black female stereotype, uh, some cute kid; I honestly don't remember most of everyone else since they were highly forgettable. The one thing you will remember more than the lame supporting cast is the shameful use of product placement. I didn't think I'd see such blatant usage of The Olive Garden that tops "Power Rangers" references to Crispy Creme, but here we are.
I have an enormous amount of respect for the work that was put into this film. I'm usually not one to encourage hearing the outcry of fans, or else you wind up with a "Rise of Skywalker" situation. But "Sonic The Hedgehog's" case was a rare one where it was good to listen to twitter. I can't believe I just wrote that about twitter. The entire selling point of this movie is to see a beloved 29-year-old video game character brought to life on the big screen. The result of the original trailer was a horrifying mess that looked like something that walked straight out of a Clive Barker film. To completely redesign Sonic himself so far into post-production was no easy task. Luckily the fix-up was an admirable herculean feat that shouldn't go unnoticed. I'll double down, taking that statement even further. Not only should this go unnoticed, but I think there will be a lot of fans of Sonic of all age ranges who could enjoy this movie far more than I did. "Sonic The Hedgehog" doesn't feel like a cynical cash grab. You can sense the care, optimism, and joy that director Jeff Fowler put into this film. Listening to the fans uproar and fixing an error of such magnitude displays the characteristic of a man who possesses a genuine sense of kind-heartedness. For that, I give Mr. Fowler and his team, even some Sonic fans out there *** I was still falling asleep during the picture's blandness, so I give it **1/2. Like a panel of judges at the Olympics, my final score can be listed below. God speed.
Just barely *** out of ****
