The underdog story of the year stars a hedgehog.
I think it’s safe to say that the “Sonic” movie faced a hideous uphill battle from the start. From a terribly designed Sonic, a hilariously bad trailer with an ill-fitting song, and being pushed back to fix these issues, leaving it to battle for money with the film “Birds of Prey” just a week prior, all eyes were on this film for being squashed at the box office.
So, with that said, it feels wrong that this movie not only survived, but also thrived and became good.
The story starts with a baby Sonic being sent to Earth in the real-life town of Green Hills, Montana, sent away by his mother to keep his speed powers safe.
Flash forward ten years later, a more grown Sonic, voiced by Ben Schwartz, accidentally caused a power outage. He has to move onto another world, but loses his means to do so, as his rings fall into San Francisco after opening up a “Doctor Strange” type portal. Now he needs help from Green Hills cop Tom Wachowski, played by James Marsden, to go and get them back while they are pursued by the evil Dr. Robotnik, played by Jim Carrey.
First thing worth mentioning is the visuals. Sonic went through quite the graphic overhaul, and the design does not disappoint. While I can think of a couple other things I wanted to see from it, I would happily take this over the original design any day.
Speaking of which, the visuals for this movie are great. They find so many unique ways to portray Sonic’s running speed, like him running in a circle and it being so fast that you can see his afterimage run frame by frame. Then there are the scenes where he is literally running fast enough that the rest of the world stops around him.
The fans certainly deserved some credit for demanded a redesign of the original monstrosity, and it’s nice to see some references to the Sonic series sprinkled out through the film. Be it obvious like the ending credit moments which I dare not spoil, having a poorly designed hedgehog picture that became a meme online be in the film as someone tried to draw Sonic, or small hidden emblems hiding in the frame.
That said, there is more to the story than visuals; and that’s more of a mixed bag. While the story is generic, with the typical buddy road trip plot, with Tom and Sonic becoming friends throughout the way. It’s pretty easy to tell where the story is going.
With that being said, there are still plenty of positives with the writing, namely the jokes. Sonic has a plethora of one liners and gags, and while some miss the mark entirely, be it either through dancing or farting, other jokes hit, namely his makeshift baseball game and road trip detours.
The other characters do their fair share. You can tell that as annoyed as Tom is with Sonic he still wants to genuinely help him, and pretty much any scene with Carrey playing an over the top Dr. Robotnik is an instant win. Even in the original trailer, he was the one good thing about it and I’m glad to see it carried over.
In the end, despite being a predictable, and sometimes unfunny ilm, it still has a few tricks up its sleeve that made me happy to spend the time and money to check it out. There are more than enough jokes and sights to see in the film that makes it worth it. This is one of those films where you can judge if you would like by watching the trailer. Just make sure it isn’t the original trailer. That would scare anyone away from the movie.
Overall Score: 6/10