Sorry Sonic, but you’re no match for ET
Sonic the Hedgehog
PG cert, 99 min
Dir Jeff Fowler
Starring Ben Schwartz (voice), James Marsden, Jim Carrey, Tika Sumpter, Adam Pally
What was your favourite level in the Sonic the Hedgehog video games? The one in which Sonic was hunted with machine guns and sniffer dogs in an alpine forest? Or perhaps the one in which Sonic visited a roadside dive bar, tried line dancing, played darts and brawled with Hell’s Angels?
Even as an avowed fan of the cobalt-quilled erinaceid’s original 16-bit escapades, I have to say I’m struggling to recall these particular moments myself. But presumably they must have been in there somewhere. Because the only other possible explanation is that the new Sonic the Hedgehog film has sidelined everything distinctive and fun about Sonic the Hedgehog – namely, the high-speed, ring-grabbing dashes through balmy fantasy landscapes – in order to shoehorn the character into yet another one-size-fits-all retread of E.T. the Extra-terrestrial.
If you grew up playing Sonic, you probably grew up watching these too: Short Circuit, Bigfoot and the Hendersons, and if you were especially unlucky, Mac and Me.
The formula didn’t change back then and still hasn’t: a cute, unreal being is adopted by an ordinary Joe, who protects them from a (typically government-backed) extermination effort.
In 2020, the alien visitor is Sonic himself, voiced by Ben Schwartz, who comes to Earth from a faraway forest planet where he was being mentored in something or other by a wise old owl called Longclaw.
Living as a hermit outside the small American town of Green Hills, Sonic turns to a kindly local sheriff called Tom (James Marsden) after his activities catch the eye of one Dr Robotnik (Jim Carrey), an unhinged and egomaniacal drone warfare specialist.
Carrey has rewound to Riddler mode, and gives what will surely be the most Nineties performance of the 2020s, while Sonic himself is a common or garden CGI smart alec, whose vocal twang seems expressly pitched to irritate parents.
He’s presentable enough – an 11th-hour redesign, prompted by the widespread horror that met his scrawnier, fang-faced appearance in the original trailer, has worked out fine – though in terms of adorability, he’s no Detective Pikachu.
You might also imagine that in a Sonic the Hedgehog film, speed would be of the essence, but there are relatively few scenes in which we get to race with our hero at full tilt: he’s more often shown at a distance; just a blue streak snaking around oddly drab real-world backdrops.
Seemingly unable to come up with ways to use the character’s trademark skill to the script’s advantage, writers Patrick Casey and Josh Miller keep coming up with reasons to slow Sonic down, from tranquilliser darts to half-hearted disguises and long, banter-heavy journeys in Tom’s pickup truck.
Every creative choice brings you circling back to the same question: why make this particular film with Sonic the Hedgehog? You almost feel goaded into brainstorming alternatives: say, something with the tone and palette of Dreamworks’s Trolls and the pace of Mad Max: Fury Road.
Children encountering the faux-e.t. format for the first time may enjoy it well enough, but signs of life, extraterrestrial or otherwise, are low to nil. RC