Sonic the Hedgehog is a Sega video game character who has starred in many video games and won the imaginations of gamers everywhere, especially in the earlier installments. These days, Sonic is either loved or hated depending on the modern video game that comes out to try and recapture the glory days of the franchise’s beginnings. While I am not a die-hard Sonic fan, I have played a few of his games and found them decently enjoyable, though I’m much more into Nintendo's Super Mario than I am Sonic. When it was announced that a movie based on the blue hedgehog was coming out people went crazy. However, when I found out that the movie was gonna be a family-friendly CGI/Live-Action Hybrid Movie, I started to have big doubts especially after seeing the trailers. Still, I kept an open mind hoping that maybe the movie would not be a failure and the results are as follows.
When a Young Sonic the Hedgehog (Ben Schwartz) is thrust into the real world on earth, he lives on by going into hiding and doing fun things by himself. However, when Sonic accidentally creates a power surge in the pacific northwest it gets the attention of a mad scientist named Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey) who wants to use sonic’s powers for his own diabolical needs. Desperate, Sonic seeks the help of a local police officer Tom (James Marsden) to get him to San Francisco to retrieve the portal rings he lost to leave earth and find a safe place to hide. All the while Dr. Robotnik tries to track the two fugitives to capture Sonic when he least expects it.
The story is basically like Illumination’s Hop if it were done slightly better with slightly being the key word. The story is your typical animated character that comes into the real world and messes up a live-action character’s life. On top of that, they go on an adventure together and attempt to form chemistry but end up fighting off some evil guy who is trying to make things worse. Now I always abide by the saying that just because something has been done before doesn’t mean you can’t do it again, but if you are gonna do the same thing as another plot the very least you can do is make the characters interesting or the adventure unique and this movie doesn’t do any of that. It’s your typical family movie writing and nothing new is added to make things any what interesting. The story also suffers from a very rushed beginning and jokes that while not bottom tier are very standard and lame. The only thing that is kinda cool is Dr. Eggman and his menacing schemes to try and stop Sonic but even that gets sidelined to make way for the standard storytelling adventure this movie thinks the audience has never seen before. The story is not awful but this movie is far from being anything like Paddington.
The characters are a mixed back with some of them coming off as intriguing and others feeling like pond scum. Sonic the Hedgehog is voiced by Ben Schwartz who you may recognize as Duey from the 2017 Ducktales Reboot. His performance is not bad at all and his one-liners and quips do manage to capture the Sonic character from the games even when he is given poor dialogue to recite. Jim Carrey as Dr. Robotnik is also kinda fun not because he’s great, but because it feels like he’s the only one who is having a lot of fun in this. Carrey is usually known for playing over-the-top cartoony characters that are wild and zany and his performance as Dr. Robotnik while not amazing is nevertheless intriguing. Sadly the rest of the characters are dull with James Marsden’s character being the headliner of that argument. Marsden plays a live-action cop character that is not too dissimilar to main human characters in other CGI/Live-Action Hybrid movies and his performance is less than engaging. Add that with many other forgettable or waisted actors playing normal standard live-action humans and you got a character roster that for the most part feels like wasted potential.
The Visuals can look appeasable and sometimes creative even if other hybrid movies make better use of the format than this movie does. The animation on Sonic is much better than when it was from the trailers and sometimes the visuals take advantage of showing Sonic’s powers of slowing down time and doing multiple things at once such as playing a game of baseball all by himself. There are also times when Sonic can use his rings as Doctor Strange portals to get from place to place around the world which can lead to some cool scenery. Outside of that, the live-action visuals are mostly standard and not at all that interesting. It honestly makes me wonder why this film was not fully animated as it would have led to a much more unique cartoony visual style that would match the feel of the Sonic video games. When using the CGI/Live-Action Hybrid format I would expect that a film of that nature would take advantage of both mediums but this film while it does have its momments seemed more for commercialism than more experimentation.
The music was composed by Tom Holkenborg who did the soundtrack for Marvel’s Deadpool. His score in this movie is not very unique and sounds like anything you’d hear in any other typical family movie and not even the inserted popular pop songs can save the score from being more than just average. I hope this guy finds his grove with other movies but I’m sorry, this score is just not doing anything for me.
Thankfully this movie did not turn out awful but managed to be in the ranks of being just okay which is a much bigger compliment I can give for this movie than most other CGI/Live-Action hybrid movies of its kind. Just because it's okay though doesn’t mean it completely dodges the “Every CGI/Live-Action Movie” trap as there were still plenty of moments that were mediocre and typical but thankfully it's not as painful to watch as something like an Alvin and the Chipmunk’s Sequel or The Smurfs. If it wasn’t for Ben Schwartz and Jim Carrey’s performances and one or two unique visuals, this movie would have been doomed to be much worse than it is. As it stands, it's just another forgettable family film that has very little to say but it should keep kids entertained for two hours. However, when even a weak sonic game has more personality and passion than a big-budget Hollywood movie, that's a sign that the filmmakers should have tried harder to make something that is much more interesting than the sum of its parts.
(Final Grade: C)