Stories shouldn’t be made unless there’s genuine inspiration to do so.
I think it’s safe to say that video game movies have had a hard time. Ever since the release of 1993’s Super Mario Bros., movie studios have struggled to balance appeals to the fans with making a script actually work for the screen. Thus far, I’m sad to say that very few films that are directly based on a property are actually passable, but there’s always a chance to break the losing streak.
Unfortunately, Sonic The Hedgehog didn’t do it.
Why Are These People In This?
Sonic is here, but where is everyone else?
I went into Sonic almost completely blind, so imagine my shock when I discovered that the creative team took a good cast and wasted it for no good reason.
The only two people in this entire movie who appear to even be trying are Ben Schwartz and James Marsden, but that’s not saying much because the script is terrible. They try to act around the buddy road trip blueprint, but the lack of material leaves them with nothing to elevate beyond the norm. With that said, their characters are the most developed in the movie, which means that it only gets worse from here.
The creative team actually got Jim Carrey to play Dr. Robotnik, and it’s one of the worst creative choices that I’ve ever seen in a film with a budget. The character comes off as a cross between someone who is doing a caricature of villainy and The Mask. Sure, his lines are eye-rollingly bad, but you’d think that they’d tweak the script once they saw that in the dailies.
As for the rest of the cast, they’re either there, annoying, or pointless. On the “there” side of things, Neal McDonough is utterly wasted as an Army Major, which is rather odd because he played an amazing Damien Darhk in the Arrowverse. However, he’s nowhere near as bad as the utterly annoying Rachel (Natasha Rothwell), who just sits there and bellows about how her sister, Maddie (Tika Sumpter), should just leave Tom for reasons.
I want to repeat that. The film has a black character who doesn’t like interracial marriages!
Oh, it gets worse.
Plot? What Plot?
What is this cringe?!
I know what you’re thinking. I shouldn’t rush to judgement on a film that is clearly made for kids, right?
No. A film that is kid-friendly should be held to similar standards as the ones that are made for adults. There are a lot of family-friendly stories out there like Star Wars, Harry Potter, and virtually any Pixar movie that have effective plots, charm, interesting characters, and a few adult jokes that will go over many kids’ heads. That’s what makes them fun.
So, what’s Sonic’s excuse?
This film has a skeleton A-to-B plot about how Sonic needs to get to San Francisco and escape Earth after his discovery, and that’s pretty much it. And as it happens, Tom is going to the same place, so it fits like a total contrivance should. Granted, there usually has to be something like this to make a story happen, but good plots attempt to pull the audience’s attention toward the message. Instead of doing that, Sonic just stops itself dead at several points to make throwaway references to memes and movies with actual stories. I’m not sure how much time was lost because I didn’t have my stopwatch app open, but I think that it would be possible to cut 25-50% of the movie without breaking a sweat.
But then, Paramount wouldn’t have a feature-length film.
To make matters worse, there’s blaring product placement for Zillow and Olive Garden, which is just silly. Sure, other movies like the ones in the James Bond franchise have scenes where a viewer can clearly see product logos or a character mentions a real-world brand, but that’s completely subtle when one compares it to Sonic. There are three scenes in this movie where the boney plot just jumps off of a cliff because the writers have to sell us something, and all of them are awful.
Conclusion.
Literally every other line out of Jim Carrey’s mouth is about LOOOOOSERS!
I tried to look for some redeeming qualities in Sonic The Hedgehog because I want to see video game movies succeed, but those are few and far between. Virtually everything that would go into a competent feature-length movie is missing here, the fairly good cast can’t elevate a non-existent script, and there are a bunch of little annoyances that would drive someone who isn’t used to entertainment-fueled masochism up a wall.
In short, it’s a waste of 98 minutes. Do literally anything else.
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