Sonic the Hedgehog Review!

Alright! Now that the theaters around me have reopened, I have been given the chance to see the second highest grossing film of this year and likely Best Picture nominee: Sonic the Hedgehog.


First, I should make it known that I have no attachment or knowledge of Sonic the Hedgehog or any other Sega video games. Full disclosure, so any references you may expect me to analyze went firmly over my head.

For whatever reason, I had built up Sonic the Hedgehog as a really good movie. I mean, it made $300 million! It had Jim Carrey! Sonic! They cared about it enough to redesign the Sonic!

Oh yeah, speaking of that Sonic.... the less said about that design is the better. I'm no fan, but that design would've ruined the movie.

No

And, I hate road trip movie. Road trip movies are the worst. They all have the same plot, the same emotional beats, and the same type of "Bar brawl" action scene. The one exception to this is Onward, which switched it up with fairies, magic, and a drive with purpose. Instead of "We need to get here," it was a "We need to get here because that's what the story is," like Dumb and Dumber or this movie, Onward was "We need to get here to stop the road trip 2/3 through the movie to see our dad again."

Don't let the movie trick you into thinking it's not generic just because it has Sonic

But I digress. I just really hate road trip movies. So much. They're the worst. And Sonic is no different.

In fact, Sonic, for a comedy, is largely unfunny. I laughed out loud... once? The "Donut Lord" bit got me in the beginning. And, any other funny scenes were already in the trailer! The "How are you not dead yet?" "I have no idea!" exchange is funny and a meme, but in the movie it wasn't funny anymore.

Even Jim Carrey is unfunny, somehow. Yeah, he's Jim Carreying it up in there, with an extremely energetic role as Doctor Eggman, but it wasn't... funny. And he was an extremely one-dimensional character. Basically, he's smart, and he wants to dissect Sonic in the name of science. Why? Science.

Good job on the suit. It looked cool.

And James Marsden, history's best second fiddle (X-Men, Superman Returns, Enchanted), is the main human star of this movie. And, he is a trope. A cop. Basically the first or second stereotype you can think of is his personality, and his relationship with his wife is no different.

And any of the fight scenes are literally just a Copy+Paste from X-Men: Days of Future Past. The difference was those scenes were funny, with their 80s music or, at the time, originality. Now, it's been copied by the Angry Birds Movie and Justice League and now this.

 Quicksilver did it better.

The biggest problem with the movie is how explicitly unoriginal it is. You can tell every beat from the movie before you watch it. I mean, I missed the first six minutes of the movie (Traffic was bad), and everything made sense anyways. And this is by no means a beautiful film either, with the cinematography and design being completely standard. And the freeze frame that starts the film? Megamind.
BUT! Does the film have any merit or good qualities?

Yes. Most movies do. For this movie, it's the voice acting of Ben Schwartz as Sonic, Jim Carrey is in a blockbuster, the fact that the studio cared enough to redesign Sonic, and this one good shot of Sonic in Doctor Eggman's reflective sunglasses. I liked that shot.

This. This shot is cool.

And, I don't know video games. I don't play video games. But, from what I can tell, most video game movies (Tomb Raider, Assassin's Creed) are just film adaptations of the video games instead of original films with the characters. So I applaud them for that.

Overall, I give Sonic the Hedgehog a 4/10. "With uninspired.... everything... Sonic the Hedgehog passes off as passable thanks to some good CGI and Jim Carrey."