Well everyone, I did it. I finally saw a movie this year, and out of all the movies I could have seen, I saw “Sonic the Hedgehog.”
“Sonic the Hedgehog” is a movie directed by Jeff Fowler based on the hit video game series by Sega Games Co. Ltd. It follows the titular speedy blue rodent (voiced by Ben Schwartz) and James Marsden playing “Thomas Wachowski” as they travel across the country to protect Sonic from the evil “Dr. (Eggman) Robotnik” portrayed by Jim Carrey.
I have not had that much experience with the games (I’ve played about four of them) so I wouldn’t necessarily consider myself a huge fan, but I know a decent amount about the characters and the world. I also know the Sonic fandom, and they are not people I would really like to associate myself with.
This movie has had the internet ready to pounce ever since the first trailer came out with probably the worst Sonic design ever. After all the backlash due to the design, the director stated that he would delay the movie and redesign Sonic to not look like an absolute abomination. A couple of months later, a new trailer came out with a much-improved design and most of the internet moved on to get angry about whatever they thought was important at the time. There really wasn’t much in the Sonic trailers that had anything of value for people to come back to. It just looked like another CGI character-human character buddy cop road trip movie that we have all seen a million times. But how was the movie?
It was OK.
I have a feeling people want to rip this movie to shreds, but it is really not that bad. Is it good? No. But it is certainly not the worst thing in the world. It is technically the best movie I have seen all year, so that is something. It’s just bland. Nothing for me or anyone to get upset over.
The performances ranged from good to weird. Ben Schwartz and James Marsden were pretty great and had solid chemistry. Jim Carrey as Dr. Robotnik was just incredible. I would love to just watch a movie with only Jim Carrey as Robotnik. I suppose I could watch almost any Jim Carrey movie and get the same performance, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. A lot of the supporting cast, however, were just very strange. There is this one character named “Wade,” and I just don’t know what the actor Adam Pally is going for. He has this weird cadence to his voice that is bizarre. All of his line deliveries made me question if I was interpreting the character wrong or if he was. I guess it made the character stand out, so on that level it worked. Tike Sumpter, the actress who played James Marsden’s wife, was definitely in the movie. The script didn’t really give her much to do, so she was also kind of bland.
The visuals were really nothing to write home about. As stated previously, the character redesign worked wonders for the overall look of the movie. I never really thought Robotnik’s machines looked fake. The action was decently intriguing. They even did the whole “Quicksilver” thing from “X-Men: Days of Future Past” where everything appears to be still as Sonic is running around and moving stuff around, which is always a fun time. Again, nothing to really get worked up over.
In the end, Sonic said “gotta go fast,” there was that ring sound effect from the games that I love so very, very much, Dr. Robotnik was a goofball and pretty gosh darn funny, and it gave me an amount of enjoyment to keep me engaged throughout the entire movie. Also, it’s a 98-minute movie! We don’t see that so often anymore, so I’m glad I didn’t have to sit through a three-hour Sanic the Horgeheg epic.
If you want to see a blue hedgehog curl up into a ball, roll around and smash into things, then this is the movie for you. You better go fast to the theaters to see it, because if you miss it, you’ll easily forget about it. If you go see this movie, you may just have a hedgehog of a time.
Leave a Reply