Sonic the Hedgehog, directed by Jeff Fowler. Written by Pat Casey and Josh Miller. Starring Ben Schwartz, James Marsden, and Jim Carrey. Paramount Pictures, 2020. Rated PG.
Sonic the Hedgehog is probably most memorable not for its content but for its disastrous roll-out, which will be the stuff of movie legend: Early previews delivered a weird design for the famous blue hedgehog, who had creepy, tiny eyes and bizarre proportions. After this received overwhelmingly negative responses from fans, presaging a bomb, the studio hastily redid the character model to bring it in line with Sonic’s appearance in video games and cartoons.
The end result was the—so far—highest-grossing movie based on a video game. At least part of that box-office success was driven by the goodwill of fans impressed that a studio had listened to their complaints.
I feel a need to point out that, despite how it was portrayed on social media, this is not entirely unprecedented. Studios regularly present movies to test audiences and re-shoot scenes that receive negative responses. Perhaps the big question with Sonic is not why the studio made a change to the design, but why the preview made it to the public with the original design intact.
Floating on the internet is a conspiracy theory that this was all orchestrated, that the original design was deliberately ugly because the filmmakers were operating on the rule that “all publicity is good publicity.” This is extremely unlikely, and at least a handful of merchandise tie-ins were even produced with the original design. Certainly, the bad press ended up being in the film’s favor—but could anyone have predicted that? Not bloody likely.
Synopsis
But now that we know the movie made money and earned positive feelings from fans, we need to ask—how good is it as a movie? The answer is, it’s just okay. It doesn’t stink, which puts it head-and-shoulders above most video-game movie tie-ins, but it’s not particularly good. It’s about like the My Litte Pony movie: a decent film-length toy ad with nothing to make it particularly memorable.
The movie opens on a CGI island where Sonic (voice of Ben Schwartz) is a small child with a gift for incredible speed. His mentor is an elderly owl who warns him that evil forces will be after his power—shortly thereafter, they are attacked, and Sonic uses a magic ring to escape to Earth, where he grows up alone in the forests of Montana.
Although good-natured, Sonic is slowly going nuts living entirely alone, his only pleasure being to spy on the humans of a nearby town that appears to have been lifted from an old-time sitcom. During a moment of particular angst, Sonic accidentally unleashes an electrical blast that knocks out the power grid of much of the West Coast. Thinking this might be an attack by some new weapon, the government deploys evil genius Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey), a (literally) mustache-twirling villain with a talent for building high-tech drones.
A word here on Robotnik: This is the recurring villain of the Sonic franchise. His original name is Eggman, though he was for a time called Robotnik in Western adaptations before those were brought back into line with the Japanese original. It is curious that the film went with the name Robotknik, though the writers likely decided (no doubt correctly) that Dr. Robotnik sounds more menacing than Dr. Eggman to English-speakers. Another possible reason for the change is that Jim Carrey, unlike the character in the video games, is not egg-shaped.
In the movie, Sonic does a few times refer to Robotnik as “Eggman,” as a disparaging nickname, to acknowledge the character’s canonical name from the video-game franchise.
In any case, the local sheriff, Tom (James Marsden), discover Sonic. After a run-in with Robotnik, Tom becomes a wanted man, so he and Sonic go on a road trip to recover Sonic’s lost bag of magic rings while Robotnik’s evil robots are in hot pursuit.
Analysis
I would describe this movie as merely competent, neither especially good or especially bad. It certainly could have been worse—given certain baffling decisions, it’s astonishing the film isn’t worse than it is.
I admit I’m not terribly familiar with the Sonic franchise, but this movie is apparently uninterested in maintaining any continuity with it. As I understand, there isn’t a single Sonic “canon,” so that may explain why the filmmakers felt free to deviate, but their choices are still bizarre.
For starters, why does this take place in Montana? I like Montana okay, but really? This is a terrible decision, reminiscent of the disastrous choice to set the 1987 live-action Masters of the Universe on Earth. There’s simply no good reason to do that—aside from budget constraints.
This is not unprecedented: The concept apparently comes partly from the animated series Sonic X, which also sees Sonic (and friends) transported to Earth. The pairing of the cartoonish Sonic with live-action human actors also has precedent in the disastrous 2006 Sonic the Hedgehog video game, which borrowed much of its look from the Final Fantasy franchise. That game might have established the pairing of Sonic with realistic human characters if only the gameplay hadn’t been atrocious.
Nonetheless, it’s hard not to compare Sonic the Hedgehog with Detective Pikachu, a movie it resembles (both feature a live-action “straight man” coupled with a chatty and hyperactive CGI companion). Detective Pikachu worked so well in large part because it gave us an entire world to explore, and its wide shots with all the crazy Pokemon characters doing weird stuff in the background pretty much make the movie. Sonic the Hedgehog contains no such whimsy. It just contains Montana.
There’s also very little in terms of plot. Jim Carrey, in his depiction of Robotnik, is up to his usual antics, basically engaging in the same brand of physical comedy and voice modulation that made his career (I know others find him hilarious, but I’ve always thought his schtick was annoying). When he has good material, Carrey is a solid actor, but the character of Robotnik has no depth. Once in a while, Carrey conveys real menace here, but for the most part, he’s a warmed-over Ace Ventura with a handlebar mustache. Carrey seems to be aware, too, that this movie is offering him nothing new as an actor: He mostly phones it in.
Robotnik’s character is especially baffling when you consider the source material: In most of the video games, Dr. Eggman is after the “chaos emeralds,” which will give him the power to conquer the world. In the movie, however, Carrey’s Robotnik has no such aspirations: He simply wants to capture Sonic to vivisect him because, apparently, that’s what government agents do when they discover extraterrestrial life. Basically, this movie eschews the premise of its source material and instead goes with the premise of Alf.
Carrey is at least comical in a hammy kind of way. The real weak link here is James Marsden, who plays the straight man to Sonic’s humorous and hyperactive character.
Marsden is no Justice Smith, and his interactions with his CGI sidekick frequently feel stiff. It’s also arguably a poor choice to use a full-grown man with his full-grown problems as Sonic’s human companion here; the aforementioned Sonic X paired Sonic with a twelve-year-old boy, which might have been a better choice for what is supposed to be a kids’ movie. Indeed, for a movie for children, Sonic the Hedgehog has a noticeable dearth of child characters; in fact, it has zero.
Conclusion
I’ve been kind of harsh, mostly because I was expecting more from a movie that saw so much controversy and hype followed by box-office success. That being said, it’s not bad. It’s just not what I’d hoped. The final battle between Sonic and Robotnik has lots of energy, though the CGI completely takes over at that point, and the movie’s conclusion suggests possible sequels that may incorporate more elements from the established franchise, including members of the Sonic universe’s sizable cast and a more fully developed role for Carrey’s interpretation of the villain. If the sequels can deliver what this film’s ending promises, then this first movie may in the end be a forgettable prequel to a winning series.
As a final aside, I will say that I very much like the pairing of cartoonish CGI characters with live actors. The contrast of cartoonish cuteness with more realistic designs has always appealed to me, starting with Jeff Smith’s Bone comics. Detective Pikachu made this work extremely well, and the 2006 Sonic the Hedgehog might have accomplished the same thing if the execution hadn’t sucked so bad. I like that they attempted that here—I just wish the characters and setting were more interesting.
All told, however, it’s a nice movie for kids. Especially in the current atmosphere, the movie’s positive depiction of small-town America and police officers is refreshing. It also has a positive theme: Sonic is like a hyperactive teenager, and the humans he meets become like his family. It would be going too far to call this subversive or counter-cultural, but it is at least inoffensive.
