REVIEW: “Sonic the Hedgehog” a solid family film
For a movie that fell behind after stumbling out of the starting gate, “Sonic the Hedgehog” finishes its race to the finish line in fairly fine form.
No, this blend of animation and live-action isn’t likely to rank among family-friendly greats for many folks. However, given the path it took to get to theaters — in May, Paramount Pictures pulled the movie from its planned November release slot and pushed it to Valentine’s Day to give the effects team time to tweak things after the film’s original trailer was met with wide criticism — we should all take this finished product and run.
Speaking of running, that’s what the pleasantly prickly character — who dates to the Sega Genesis “Sonic the Hedgehog” video game of the early 1990s and subsequent sequels — is known for.
“I feel like I’ve been running my whole life,” the blue, digitally animated Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz) tells us in the film’s opening narration, as he’s being chased through the streets of San Francisco by Jim Carrey’s maniacally evil Dr. Robotnik.
That’s close to the end of his adventure, we learn, and Sonic quickly takes us back to the beginning. He comes from an island on another planet, where he was advised to hide his super-speed ability, but that was too big an ask of the kid, especially considering the island had naturally occurring loops for him to run through.
When he attracts the wrong kind of attention and his life becomes endangered, he is sent to Earth via a magical ring — and given more rings should he need to move on.
He settles in Green Hills, Mont., a small, lush town where he fills a cave with goodies that include, of course, issues of “The Flash” comic book.
He also makes himself an honorary, unseen and unknown member of a family of Tom (James Marsden), a police officer, and his veterinarian wife, Maddie (Tika Sumpter of “Mixed-ish”). Sonic refers to Tom as “Doughnut Lord,” due to his penchant for talking to (and eventually eating) the cop-favorite pastry, and to Maddie as “Pretzel Lady,” because of her yoga devotion. Sonic has made a habit of crashing movie night at the house, peeking in from outside a window.
Unbeknown to Sonic, Tom — tired of what he sees as insignificant police work in the quiet town — has designs on moving to San Francisco to join the much larger force there.
And while Sonic loves life in Green Hills, it is a lonely existence. With his ability to move from here to there in a microscopic fraction of a second, he serves as his own psychologist and plays all the necessary positions in a solo baseball game on a deserted diamond in the middle of the night. It’s after driving in — and scoring — the winning run that Sonic has an emotional meltdown; the fact that he has no one to share cool moments with leads to him going on a turbo-charged run that knocks out power in the area.
That catches the attention of a concerned CIA, which dispatches the aforementioned Robotnik to determine what caused the outage and to neutralize it.
As you may have guessed by the casting of the comedically gifted Carrey, Robotnik — complete with big handlebar mustache — is one strange bird. And he eventually comes to see Sonic’s power as a key to furthering his own interests.
After his first real — and problematic — encounter with Tom, Sonic needs his help in getting to San Francisco. It takes some convincing, but Tom agrees to drive him to the Bay Area, where Tika already is looking for a place for them to live and visiting family.
Couldn’t Sonic just zip there on his own? Well, after an injury caused by Tom heals, yes, but then we couldn’t have a road trip, could we? (You just have to live with this and other plot holes. This is a movie primarily for children, after all.)
Unfortunately, once “Sonic the Hedgehog” hits the road, the story from writers Pat Casey and Josh Miller loses a bit of its pep. Although he orchestrates a lot of fun gags in the movie, director Jeff Fowler (making his feature directorial debut) could have kept things moving along at a quicker clip. Most notably, Sonic and Tom — and, as a result, we — spend far too much time at a biker bar when our heroes allegedly are trying to keep a low profile while being pursued by Robotnik.
Speaking of our villain, it helps to have Carrey — who’s turned somewhat to more serious fare in the last several years but seems to be channeling the energy from his old “Ace Ventura” movies here — behind the mustache. Few folks go way over the top as well as he does.
On the opposite side of the spectrum is Marsden (“X-Men: Days of Future Past,” “Westworld”), who works well as the ordinary and likable guy around whom all this madness swirls.
Last but not least, there’s Schwartz, who has a handful of notable credits but who to some of us will always be the hilarious character Jean-Ralphio Saperstein on “Parks and Recreation.” Schwartz gives Sonic just the right mix of energy and emotion, causing you to invest in him early.
“Sonic the Hedgehog” is just good enough where we wouldn’t mind a second dashing adventure in the not-to-distant future.