Sonic the Hedgehog can proudly stand alongside the Power Rangers movie. You might think a 2.5/5 score for a movie is bad, but for a film with such a hilarious amount of bad press as Sonic got immediately, simply reaching competent is a feat. It’s not the best kids movie ever made, but it isn’t a terrible one either, so notch a 1/2 win for movies made from video games I guess? I can’t believe Mortal Kombat is the best one still.
After your run of the mill tragic kids movie upbringing, Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz) lives on Earth, having teleported there with the help of his rings. He lives near the small town of Green Hills, so fast that no one can report him to the authorities, but also no one knows he exists. Exasperated one day, he unleashes a power surge that causes a giant blackout. That blackout catches the eye of the US government, who sends Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey) to the scene to investigate. Desperate with nowhere to turn, Sonic asks the donut lord, local sherriff Tom Wachowski (James Marsden) for help.
The visuals are…thankfully fine. I wouldn’t call them anything special, but no one will be up in arms after what they see. This whole movie is going for family friendly, so any of Sonic’s rough edges are smoothed out, trying to make him a merchandisable commodity. Sonic as a movie is a 90 minute exercise in pure capitalism: get ready to be sold people! The product placement is pretty irritating, obviously. However, at least the writers (for the first half of the movie) are self aware about it, and simply exaggerate Olive Garden’s contribution, for example, to hilariously long asides. I’ll admit I chuckled a few times at their attempts to alleviate the marketing efforts of numerous brand managers.
As for the story, Sonic doesn’t bring anything interesting or exciting to the table. It’s your basic “friendship is important” message nonsense. What makes the movie palatable are the 3 leads. The more I thought about it, Ben Schwartz was halfway decent at playing the CGI version of a Red Bull. You can see Schwartz actually trying, giving Sonic that loose freewheeling talk because literally no one else is there to join in for most his life, walking the weird, insufferable line to mostly ok effect. James Marsden is fine as his P.i.C., overemoting as is required for something straightforward like this. But the big reason the movie works at all is because of Jim Carrey. When the bad guy already has a mustache that twirlable like Dr. Robotnik, might as well cast the best physical comedian on the planet. Carey plays Robotnik like the unhinged opposite of Sonic, a holier than thou genius that’s a cross between Ace Ventura and Dick Van Dyke. Carrey motormouths and dances around with reckless abandon, reminding everyone what makes him so special. I imagine most adults will be rooting for Robotnik to eviscerate Sonic by the end because of how looney Carrey gets to be.
There was lots of laughing in my theater from little kids, with I believe only 2 fart jokes that I heard. A low bar for Sonic the Hedgehog to cover, but again, could be worse. Also, I’m kinda stoked for the sequel, which looks like Carrey would be 50% more unhinged than this whackadoodle performance. Bring on the mushroom planet!