I felt the need to see “one of the biggest films of the year”. Well, I saw it, and it plainly wasn’t for me. Sure, it was never intended to be, but I grew to resent my time with this blue animated fuzzball, something that didn’t happen with other “made for kids films” (Detective Pikachu being a perfect example). I will give it its due for decent special effects and, I guess, for Jim Carrey going all in on his loathsome and irritating Dr. Robotnik caricature. It cannot be said that it is an awfully made movie. I just had no interest and did not enjoy my time with it.
No one wants to read “bitter old fool shakes his fist at semi-animated video game character on his screen”, so I will keep it short. I so often despise the “fish out of water” scenario that these screenplays are based on. Why can’t I just watch a film about Sonic in Sonicland? Do I really need to see him interacting with human people for these ridiculously lame bits? Perhaps it is just to make boring referential jokes to current fads (“Give me 5 stars” - for his driving) or to shill for corporate interests (What is the friggin deal with Olive Garden in this film? This has to be the most expensive commercial they have ever put forth.). But, even in this scenario, Sonic can tell you the corporate strategy of Amazon but can’t figure out the names of the humans he lives with or how the world works. That isn’t even taking into account the abandoning any kind of logical physics (I mean, he runs fast enough that people can’t see anything more than a blur, doesn’t that mean he is breaking the sound barrier and causing sonic booms?) or social believability (he is an upright walking blue anime-eyed hedgehog creature, that doesn’t cause any kind of awe or shock? Is it because he was wearing a cowboy hat and some sunglasses?). I roll my eyes at all of this and start mouthing my dismay, but I catch myself, because I am watching a children’s film about an anthropomorphic alien hedgehog ported over from a video game. I have made my lackluster bed and must sleep in it.
Really, it was just so unengaging and banal. The easiest & already tread roads are taken (doing the same Quicksilver/Flash “time stops and I run around a room changing things” had no life) and it can’t help but chock itself full of lame jokes and bits. I mean, it was probably the moment we were given a literal fart joke that I fully checked out. Somehow them putting on soft slow music also did not inject emotion into this lifeless furry facade. I could see some getting on board with Jim Carrey’s performance, and he is having a ball, bringing his Mask/Ventura energy back to the screen, but I couldn’t do anything beyond dull appreciation of his efforts. It just had nothing for me and I counted down the minutes until it ended. If only this Sonic movie could have raced a little faster to the finish, it would have done us all well.
