This valentine’s day an unlikely movie swept the top spot at theaters and no, it wasn’t a Hollywood romance film, it was Sonic the Hedgehog. Best known for his appearance in SEGA’s famous video game series he now makes his way to the big screen! Video game movies haven’t been too well received in the past and SEGA took a big risk investing in this movie, especially after all of its production struggles.
When the first trailer released fans where furious with Sonics new look. Unlike some video game movies, SEGA opted to do a live action film instead of an animated one. This meant that Sonic had to be entirely created in CGI (computer generated graphics). I understand that creating an anthropomorphic hedgehog is not an easy feat, however his appearance was completely unacceptable. Instead of looking like the cartoon character that we all know in love, they strived to make Sonic as realistic as possible. This move obviously didn’t pay off and angered both movie and video game enthusiasts. The backlash eventually pushed SEGA to pull the trailer they went back to the drawing board. In May of 2019, Jeff Fowler, the director of the film, announced that they were redesigning Sonic much to the relief of fans.
The movie featured a star-studded cast featuring Ben Schwartz as Sonic, James Marsden as Tom (a police officer) and the legendary Jim Carrey as the villain, Dr. Ivo Robotnik. I’ve got to say that Jim Carrey’s performance absolutely stole the show. He totally embraced Dr. Robotnik’s personality to a T! Whilst I am not a huge fan of his other films this performance was legendary. It was classic Jim Carrey in every which way, it often reminded me of another one of his great films, The Mask. James Marsden’s performance was also fabulous given that he was talking to a nonexistent character throughout the film. I couldn’t even imagine how hard that would be, it even challenges some of the best actors!
I don’t want to dive too deep into the storyline but it’s pretty straight forward. Sonic is being chased by his number one nemesis, Dr.Robotnik. He wants to capture Sonic in order to conduct evil experiment on him. As a result Sonic teams up with a unlikely ally, a local police officer in hopes that together they can defeat Dr.Robotnik. Obviously, this movie is orientated towards children, so nothing too complex ever happens in the film. That totally fine, I actually preferred that the storyline was so simple and basic. It was a great way to introduce newcomers to the franchises.
Overall, I really enjoyed the film and I would recommend it to anyone seeking a good family friendly film. I have a feeling that this isn’t the last we will see of Sonic and I expect a sequel will be in the works. If so I hope that we will see more characters from the Sonic universe, such as Tails and Knuckles. Till then this movie will have to make do.
8/10
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