Sonic dashes his way onto the big screen
As videogame movies go, Sonic is just your average live-action adaptation, nothing special. In terms of Hollywood, however, Sonic is entirely unprecedented.
Never before has a movie been completely revamped due to input from fans. Most of the time the studio just goes ahead and disappoints everyone. This time, after a couple of months of social media backlash, Paramount delayed the project an entire six months just to redesign the blue hedgehog.
The story follows Sonic, voiced by Ben Shwartz, accidentally transporting himself into Montana. He quite literally runs into Tom Wachowski, played by James Mardsen, but it takes some time for the two to warm up to each other.
Eventually, the bickering pair is confronted by Dr. Eggman, an evil mad scientist, played by Jim Carrey, bent on stealing Sonic’s powers and taking over the world. Sonic and Tom must put their differences aside if they hope to survive.
Although the CGI character himself looks great, his development in the plot could use some work. Sonic begins as a happy-go-lucky, rebellious teen type of hedgehog. As we see later on, however, he has strong emotions, strong enough to cause power outages if he’s really angry. By the end of the movie, he is more mature but the transition seems quite forced, as there is nothing to cause the transition aside from battling Eggman. Albeit, it’s also a children’s movie so the character development isn’t meant to be amazing.
Aside from that, Sonic is charming and at times absolutely hilarious. Furthermore, the chemistry between James Mardsen and CGI characters is incredible. Talking to a green screen as if it were a real person is no easy task, but Mardsen makes it look good.
Jim Carrey was an absolutely perfect choice to play Dr. Eggman. His costume design lacks the plumpness that the video game character iconically held, but his acting more than makes up for it. Combining aspects from his past characters in films like “The Mask”, or “Ace Ventura”, Carrey delivers a quirky and hilarious, yet definitively evil performance.
All in all, Sonic is a funny, family-friendly movie, but isn’t great past that. It probably wouldn’t be worth watching unless you are a child or you grew up playing the original game.
