“Sonic the Hedgehog” ran into theaters on February 14, 2020. Photo from Forbes.com
The live action film adaptation of the video game“Sonic The Hedgehog” is only slightly enjoyable due to the comedic performance of Jim Carrey as Dr. Robotnik, who thrives in an otherwise dull and mainly uninteresting family adventure. The Jeff Fowler directed comedy follows Sonic living on Earth while hiding from enemies in his home world. However, he causes a power surge that sends the evil Dr. Robotnik on a search for him as Sonic goes on a road trip to retrieve his lost rings.
The film is pretty harmless, yet utterly dull. It uses the same cliches from every children film while barely having any good comedy or action sequences.
Most of the humor and action sequences will probably work for kids and hardcore Sonic fans but it just doesn’t offer anything new or original. Sonic is a character that can be charming at first before becoming annoying by the film’s second act. He is simply the animated character who is lonely and makes a friend in James Marsden, who plays small town sheriff Tom who wants to become a real cop.
The character of Sonic does not blend that well into the real world environments because of his cartoonish design and a lack of real video game elements being incorporated into the film’s predictable story. The humor in the film is relatively hit or miss anytime Jim Carrey is off screen because while Ben Swartz does a good vocal performance as Sonic, the character can get irritating due to his rapid fire dialogue that features a lot of failed humor.
Even the plot of the film basically sums up your average road trip film paired with some “Sonic the Hedgehog” elements. The only truly memorable performance in the film comes from Carrey, who is clearly having fun playing the evil Dr. Robotnik. Meanwhile, Marsden looks like he is almost sleepwalking through his role.
On the other hand, “Sonic” does have a few relatively funny moments with Jim Carrey as Dr. Robotnik and a fairly interesting action sequence at the end that really could have been used earlier in the film. Anytime the film tries to settle on scenes between Sonic and Tom, there is really no point of interest because the characters are not very well developed and are facing problems that are really their own fault.
This leads to a severe lack of on-screen chemistry that really could make or break a film within this genre. Even the film’s first real interesting sequence of Sonic messing with time and people as a bar fight starts to break out is taken right out of Quicksilver from the recent “X- Men” films. Otherwise, the film barely features Sonic’s home world because it wants to instead make Sonic a hero to root for in our world. By the film’s slightly interesting yet completely ridiculous climax, there is no real tension of whether Sonic will be defeated by Robotnik because both characters seem completely invincible by that point in the story. Lastly, “Sonic” suffers from some of the most blatant product placement I’ve seen in a while which they try play off as a joke to no avail.
“Sonic The Hedgehog” proves itself to be a fairly harmless, yet thoroughly generic video game adaptation with a few good action sequences and a good performance from Jim Carrey to make up for its lack of true originality. I would give “Sonic” a four and a half out of 10 on a rating scale.