Sega adaptation ends up as nothing to raise hackles
If it feels as if this “Sonic the Hedgehog” review has already been written, that’s the reality of filmmaking in our era of social media omnipresence.
The movie was allbutcanceled on Twitter after the trailer release last summer, when fans revolted after the look of the video game character didn’t match their treasured Sega Genesisplaying memories (his thighs are too big!) and filmmakers were forced to defend a movie that hadn’t come out yet. Faced with what — based on the level of outrage — seemed like a long congressional inquiry ahead, the release was postponed to finetune the
visuals.
It appears we all owe a big apology to the “Sonic the Hedgehog” movie.
Far from the blight on cinema it was portrayed to be, this is a benign and charming smallscale family movie — and it still would have been even if the filmmakers didn’t get the animated character’s teeth right.
“Sonic the Hedgehog” is not a classic, or even especially memorable. It’s set in an alternative reality where a middleclass police officer makes a Zillow search for a home in San Francisco, and that action is not played for laughs. But this lowkey video game movie is built on a foundation of solid writing and likable characters, and a mellow escapist vibe that doesn’t get lost in excess.
“Sonic” is better than “Pokemon: Detective Pikachu,” all of the “Alvin and the Chipmunks” sequels and a lot more familyfriendly movies that were released before the influence of social media killed the benefit of the doubt in Hollywood.
Good decisions are made from the beginning in “Sonic.” After a mercifully short opening sequence in his video game world, blue alien Sonic the Hedgehog (voiced by Ben Schwartz) takes a portal to Green Hills, Mont. He uses his superspeed to stay mostly invisible, but he longs to be a part of the smalltown community.
Director Jeff Fowler takes his time in these early scenes, showing Sonic giving a ride to a turtle, testing his speed on a radar gun and playing around with town crank Crazy Carl, the only one who has actually seen Sonic.
When Sonic plays a Looney Tunesstyle baseball game of one — a wellcrafted scene that highlights his loneliness — the government discovers Sonic’s location and sends Dr. Robotnik ( Jim Carrey), a mad scientist who overcompensates for his insecurities with drone technology. Sonic partners with town sheriff Tom Wachowski ( James Marsden) on a road trip to San Francisco, where another portal can send the video game creature to a safer place.
The plot doesn’t matter as much as the tone. Fowler and screenwriters Pat Casey and Josh Miller establish pleasing and slightly offbeat characters, while skewing the world into video game terms, so no one ever seems as if they’re in true peril. As a visual, Jim Carrey’s character is way over the top. But the actor works in subtleties too, with his awkwardness on display during a scene where Robotnik tries to impersonate a bluecollar power company worker.
Best of all, the laughs often arrive in small moments, not in the obvious ones.
Marsden shows a capacity for physical comedy that’s almost shocking if you primarily know him from “XMen” movies. Tika Sumpter is solid as the sheriff ’s kind wife. They combine to form the kind of lovingyetslightlydysfunctional home that a smartass blue alien might complete.
There’s a good Olive Garden joke. It’s a tribute to the restraint of the writers that the first bodily function punch line doesn’t arrive until the final third of the film.
“Sonic the Hedgehog” doesn’t strive for documentary, which is especially apparent when our heroes arrive west of the Sierra. San Francisco is represented in this film in the way that Swiss culture is represented in Disneyland’s Matterhorn ride.
The “Sonic” filmmakers even concoct a hilly San Francisco neighborhood with big grassy yards, 2,200squarefoot homes, and a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. (Imagine if someone dropped a few acres of San Ramon on the Presidio, and it was affordable to the middle class.) And the scale of the Transamerica Pyramid, a centerpiece in the finale, is all wrong.
Yet, like everything in this perfectly fine movie, it’s not worth lodging a formal complaint, even though your Facebook account may be ohsoclose to your fingertips.
Think of all the good things in cinema — XMen wearing leather catsuits, elves in Helm’s Deep and Heath Ledger as the Joker are a few that come to mind — that would have failed if they were put to a fan vote.
That’s the lesson of “Sonic the Hedgehog.” Every once in a while, a movie is going to come out that doesn’t meet the exact specifications of our individual childhood expectations. And when that happens, why not just go along for the ride?