Directed by: Jeff Fowler
Starring: Ben Schwartz, James Marsden, Jim Carrey, Tika Sumpter
Rated PG, 99 minutes
If last year’s “Pokémon Detective Pikachu” was a no-holds-barred experiment in bringing video games to the big screen, “Sonic the Hedgehog” reflects a smaller, safer approach to adaptation. Such was Paramount’s caution with “Sonic,” in fact, that the studio delayed the movie’s release in order to revise the blue hedgehog’s design after fans of the video game franchise lambasted his appearance in the trailers. The extra attention to visual details paid off, thankfully, even if the storyline around them is underwhelming.
Helmed by Jeff Fowler, making his feature debut, the movie faithfully captures Sonic’s essence, beginning with the very first shot, a fast-moving aerial view of San Francisco. Sonic’s identifying quality is his speed, at times so great that everyone around him appears frozen in place, so it’s fitting that the movie wastes no time getting started. Before you can even say “backstory,” we’ve already moved past it—childhood on another planet, a sudden attack, escaping through an interplanetary portal, you get the gist; gotta go fast!—and into Sonic’s adventures on Earth.
Stranded and hiding in Montana, Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz, “Parks and Recreation”) quietly spies on the residents of a small town, forming imaginary friendships with them while growing more despondent at his isolation. One particularly lonely night, however, he inadvertently produces a shockwave that shuts down power across the entire Pacific Northwest. Enter the evil Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey, “Bruce Almighty”), a mad scientist who sends a fleet of drones to find, capture, and neutralize the source of the disturbance. Sonic, needing to escape, finds help in the form of Tom Wachowski (James Marsden, “X-Men”), a local police officer who smuggles Sonic out of Dr. Robotnik’s grasp.
Now on the lam, Sonic and Tom bond over their shared appreciation for the daring adventure on which they have found themselves. Sonic has been in hiding ever since he landed on Earth, desperate for a place to call home and for friends to share it with. For his part, Tom has lived in rural Montana his whole life and, tiring of the seemingly unimportant problems that his police department faces, he longs for a chance to serve in a bigger city. Brought together, they start asking themselves tough questions about what they care about and where they want to be.
It’s odd that a children’s movie touches thematically on how we shape our professional lives and on the disparities between city life and rural life—most children seeing the movie probably won’t face such questions for several years—but “Sonic,” by giving its younger audience and its older audience the same things to chew on, feels like a genuine novelty. There are plenty of immediately digestible moments, too, mostly gags involving Sonic’s tremendous speed or Dr. Robotnik’s maniacal ravings (played by Jim Carrey with his signature hamminess), but even these jokes offer something unusual. The single best scene of the movie involves Sonic and Tom getting into a bar fight with a crowd of bikers; with the right focus on the right details, though, the scene slides easily into its PG-rated surroundings.
And yet, for all that it brings to the often formulaic genre of kids’ movies, and for all that it contributes to the growing genre of video game movies, “Sonic” feels hollow as an act of storytelling. There are stakes and plot points, but no tension. There are characters, but few interesting ones; a couple of fun supporting characters who serve as comic relief only emphasize how uninteresting Tom is as our leading man, with his Pottery-Barn-catalog house and his inexplicable love for the Olive Garden. (Even for standard cinematic product placement, two separate references to the Olive Garden is excessive.) Sonic is a better-drawn character than Tom, but still confused, fluctuating between adolescent chest-puffing and childish whining without ever building up to anything.
Still, there are worse fates for a movie with this much baggage—with the history of a franchise to reference, a young audience to cater to, and a delay caused by widely publicized criticisms of its design. Despite all that, “Sonic” stays focused, successfully embodying the bold, breakneck intensity of its star while giving us more than pure novelty. There will be better movies made from gaming franchises, but “Sonic” feels like the bridge that will lead us to them.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 2/21/20.