Sonic the Hedgehog

RATING: C+

Here's the latest attempt to make a successful video-game movie... the vast majority of attempts which have failed. However, in the last few years we have seen attempts that at least were seen as okay and not dumpster fires (Pokemon Detective Pikachu, Alicia Vikander's Tomb Raider, and Rampage of all things). So here comes the newest one of those "not bad but not that great either" video game movies--Sonic the Hedgehog, one of the more prolific and long-running franchises that's not an FPS or Nintendo-related.

This film puts Sonic the super-fast blue Hedgehog on an otherwise-normal plant Earth with a somewhat more cinematic (and thus cliched) backstory, and he's been in hiding for many years. However, when he accidentally activates some powers that I don't think he had in the games (I could be wrong though; I've only played a relatively small number of the large catalogue of Sonic games), he ends up revealing his presence. Cue the mad scientist Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey) coming to find him, and intending to experiment on him. Sonic teams up with a local sheriff (James Marsden) to help him escape the planet by retrieving his lost rings, which here serve as... portals to other worlds? Sure, let's go with that. To be fair, going with the normal trope of Sonic rings being magical items that let you survive anything as long as you have some wouldn't have translated that well to a live-action feature.

This definitely qualifies as a quite mixed bag. On one hand, despite some aspects of this franchise being difficult to translate to a live-action movie, it's actually decently faithful. We do get a nice high-speed chase towards the end, which truly does feel like a Sonic level (albeit not in the usual settings). Plus, the very final battle between Sonic and Robotnik definitely does not feel unlike a normal Sonic boss battle. While the writing is a bit goofy, there are some genuinely funny moments to be found here. And there are a few quite nice nods to the Sonic canon and fandom (there's even a "gotta go fast!" moment of sorts).

And the CGI creation of Sonic actually looks fairly good, especially when you consider the abomination that they originally had (seen in the infamous first trailer). It's been said many times by many others, but credit should absolutely be given to the animators for completely re-working Sonic's design for the entire movie in just three months, and to the studio for actually listening to the fans' complaints.

The problems mostly come down to the writing and the often rather cliched plot. There's a fair amount of lame dialogue here. And the character of Sonic is actually a bit annoying at times--this is basically an adolescent version of the character whose mouth is as fast as his feet, and it shows. This doesn't ruin the movie, but it does make the goings a little tedious at times.

What absolutely helps knock this movie up a notch is the performance of Jim Carrey as Dr. Robotnik. Carrey is clearly having a lot of fun in this role, and hams it up to the extreme--which is absolutely to this movie's benefit, and actually does kind of fit the character. It may be hard to believe we're saying this about a Jim Carrey movie at this point, but he alone makes it worth watching. Even some of the less good lines he has, he makes them work by being deliciously over-the-top.

This Sonic video game movie, like its competitors, doesn't break the mold due to its average story and below-average script. But it does get by with some charm and some of its more faithful-to-the-source-material moments, plus a deliciously fun villain (seriously, name the last time a video game movie villain was memorable at all). Definitely above-average for a video game movie adaptation--which isn't saying much, but between this and some of the other above-average attempts recently, these types of movies may finally be on the right track... sort of. Sonic fans will want to give it a shot, and for more casual fans or even non-fans... you could do much worse, especially given the lack of new movies in the last few months since this movie's release.