Sonic the Hedgehog Movie Review

This movie has to be better than Super Mario Bros... Right? RIGHT?

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG-

Out of all the things that I thought that I would have to complain about before seeing this movie, I never guessed that it would be about the product placement. Sure it can be annoyingly obvious at times during certain films (here's looking at you, POWER RANGERS!), yet with this movie I have a genuine complaint about it. Aside from the most perplexing omission of Sonic Drive-In as the main sponsor, how and why did the Olive Garden ever win the bid for SONIC THE FREAKING HEDGEHOG?! Hedgehogs don't even eat pasta, I think.

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG is actually not the full blown disaster that I expected it to be. In fact, it's downright charming at times. Don't get me wrong though, this film is far from great, and only mildly close to good. I have to take into account that this film was directed more at kids, with a dose of fan service sprinkled towards us now middle-aged fanboys. Hey, at least you'll never catch me at a MY LITTLE PONY feature. I do have my limits. The story is nothing special. In fact, it's just a collection of ideas from other films that did it way better and before the word "cliche" was close to being mentioned. The hedgehog out of water mysteriously transported to Earth plot is nothing new, yet it is no where near as disrespectful feeling as THE SMURFS or even MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE turned out to be. The Robotnik tech stands out in regards to the visuals. Otherwise, the effects are a mishmash of cartoony versus too cartoony.

The Sonic character is exactly how he should look, sound, and feel, and even the game easter eggs hit the mark without being too Olivegardeney. The cast stands as nice placeholders that handle their parts without leaving any negative or positive impressions. There are however some characters that are either wasted opportunities, absolutely pointless, or annoying simply for the sake of causing unnecessary conflict. See if you can differentiate between them when you see this movie. Sonic aside, Jim Carrey is SONIC THE HEDGEHOG's strongest asset. There are times when it seemed strange that nobody clocked him in the face during some of his condescending rants, but when the script tells everybody to shut up and take it... Jim feels like the old Jim, not the "What is my place in the universe described through Picassoesque paintings?" that we've seen for the last decade plus.
Surprisingly, there are more things done right in terms of the Sega created characters than wrong. The morality tale about friendship isn't much to write about, but its heart is definitely in the right place. I'll take that over almost every video game live action adaptation since 1993. You know what happened, right? King Koopa had cornrows! Dafuq?!

Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
PG | 1h 39min | Action, Adventure, Comedy | 14 February 2020 (USA)
After discovering a small, blue, fast hedgehog, a small-town police officer must help it defeat an evil genius who wants to do experiments on it.

Director: Jeff Fowler
Writers: Patrick Casey, Josh Miller |
Stars: Ben Schwartz, James Marsden, Jim Carrey