I don’t know why, but I was pretty giddy for Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Some of it is nostalgia: I loved the Sonic games growing up. And some of it is expectations: the first movie was actually half decent, making me hope for something a little better for this sequel. Sonic 2 is about as good as the first film, meaning its totally fine family entertainment that will have a few laughs and harmless delights, putting Sonic firmly in the upper echelon of video game to movie adaptations.
With Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey) and CGI fiascoes firmly behind him, Sonic (Ben Schwartz) has settled into a happy life in Seattle suburb Green Hills on Earth, cared for by his pseudo parents Tom (James Marsden) and Maddie (Tika Sumpter) Wachowski. A superhero wannabe, Sonic moonlights helping the police fight bad guys, but causes a lot of mayhem in the process, hoping for his “moment” to shine. The moment finds him in the form of an all powerful green emerald, coveted by many. Hidden on Earth, Sonic must find this emerald before more evil and powerful people do, like Robotnik, a two tailed fox named Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey), and a powerful intergalactic warrior named Knuckles (Idris Elba), who’s Echidna clan is at odds with Sonic’s.
I keep forgetting how fun a varied the Sonic “Zones” were, which the movie has a lot of fun drawing inspiration from. At the beginning Jim Carrey is on the Mushroom planet (Mushroom Hill Zone), having a blast going crazy isolated by himself. Sonic’s biplane appears, letting him fly through the air and dodge missiles like an actual Sonic level. The underwater sequences are the biggest delight for me, using the video game’s clever way of maintaining oxygen levels. The levels are so diverse Sonic 2 gets to go planet hopping and climate hopping, from the Pacific islands to snowboarding in Siberia, a sneaky good travelogue movie.
Both Sonic movies remind me of longer versions of a Saturday morning cartoon. There’s one big lesson. In the first it was how friends and family are important; in Sonic 2, the lesson is about what is/how to be a hero. That’s where characters from Sonic lore come into play. Sonic has been basically only responsible for himself, and Tails’s appearance gives him someone he has to protect in his quest to also save Earth. Jim Carrey obviously delights playing Sonic’s doppelganger: a man entirely using others to further his own narcissistic means. Idris Elba’s Knuckles is the wildcard here: someone who desperately wants to be a hero but is stuck between a Sonic/Robotnik war. Elba makes him pretty cool, but the movie doesn’t fully unleash him enough. At the end, the movie deploys him like Dave Bautista is used in Guardians of the Galaxy, deadpanning every reaction to common things like baseball, to truly great comedic effect. I guess when most of your scenes are opposite Jim Carrey, you want Carrey to be the funny one, but Knuckles feels more like a missed opportunity that will be fixed for the inevitable Sonic 3.
Kids will get a kick out of Sonic 2 just like the first Sonic. And there’s enough in there for parents to not be bored either. More importantly, I think Sonic cracked the video game to movie code: don’t adapt sprawling complex video games: adapt smaller ones that you can draw just enough from to make the movie faithful but not oversimplifying a multi day movie event. You know what that means: Carmen San Diego the movie is next!