Week 5: Sonic the Hedgehog

Whoops, I’m breaking my own rules again! As with my last review of Gretel & Hansel, this week’s film actually did not get bad reviews with critics. But what’s that old saying about rules? Oh yeah, they’re made to be broken. So basically, fuck it.

But I swear I’m not just going off the deep end. This is still a blog about bad movies. And Sonic the Hedgehog has all the ingredients we’ve identified as necessitating utter idiocy in filmmaking throughout the weeks of this blog’s existence. It’s based on pre-existing intellectual property (Dolittle, Cats, Gretel & Hansel), it horrified audiences with its unfortunate character CGI choices (Cats!!), and it even has Jim Carrey in it! Okay, the Jim Carrey thing isn’t really all that relevant or such a sure fire ingredient for bad filmmaking, but it certainly doesn’t help this film’s prospects to have Jim Carrey essentially just playing Jim Carrey per usual, I mean god am I the only one that’s tired of that??

But as I said, the one singular thing that this movie doesn’t have is in fact the central pillar of this blog: bad reviews. And unlike Gretel & Hansel, it managed not to flop with both categories of viewers. That’s right, neither critics nor audiences had any significant beef with Sonic. This film managed a considerable 63% positive ratings from critics as well as an astounding 94% positive ratings from audiences. That means that more audience members liked Sonic than did nearly every film that was up for an Oscar this year, more than Frozen I or Frozen II, more than Inside Out, more than Avengers: Endgame, MORE THAN UP. Every-fucking-body likes Up!!! Are you kidding me????? I couldn’t believe it. I had to see for myself.

One-Sentence Synopsis:

An extremely hairy blue alien child finds himself as a refugee on planet Earth when a series of misadventures ensues following the… okay, what the fuck, this film is basically just a widely-cast net for any moviegoer that plays video games, has children that they want to stop talking to them for a few hours, or is one of those children, while it also conveniently doubles as a 2 hour-long ad for Zillow, Olive Garden, and the Toyota Tacoma.

My Review:

Let’s start with the good. One major thing I will say in favor of this movie and the folks who made it is that, unlike those sadists that worked on Cats, the Sonic guys actually fixed their mistake following criticism over the look of its central character. They even pushed back the release of the film by 3 months in order to pull this off (Source: Altpress). And it paid off!

Additionally, this movie appears to have made at least some sort of a concerted effort to be not just a kids’ movie, but a family movie. Jokes that were clearly geared toward the grown-ups in the room were sprinkled in on occasion and with intention. And this is smart because Sonic videogames have now been released and played for decades, meaning that there were likely just as many adults as there were children excited to see their favorite character brought to life in this film.

That being said we now move on to my favorite part, the bad. Although this movie did its due diligence to tend to all ages, it didn’t do so to much effect. Ultimately, this really still felt like a kids’ movie. Only a small handful of the jokes being made actually managed to elicit a giggle or two from yours truly, while the eight-year-old sitting next to me found the film to be an absolute riot.  

Also, I’m sorry but I’m circling back to the Jim Carrey thing. He’s been good but it’s time for a new bit, Jimbo. And the worst part is, he has range (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, anyone?). And he can be genuinely funny (please tell me you’ve seen the SNL parodies of Matthew McConaughey’s Lincoln commercials). He just keeps choosing to take these roles where he does the same shit over and over again. I mean I guess I can’t really blame him because money is cool but I truly didn’t find his performance to add much to this movie. Instead, it only made the humor seem slightly tired and predictable. There’s this rule in filmmaking that you can’t repeat the same beat too many times, especially in comedy, before it suffers from the law of diminishing returns. For all you normal people out there, that basically just means that if you make the same joke too many times it becomes increasingly less funny and eventually isn’t funny at all. My thinking is that if that applies within a single 90 minute movie, how the hell can anyone still find Jim Carrey funny when he’s been doing the same bit for literally 30 years?? More than anything, his performance in Sonic often just took me out of the film entirely. And don’t even get me started on the effect of the weirdly timed and sometimes even downright shameless product placement with which this film was riddled.

Finally, and perhaps worst of all, this movie failed to make me feel anything. Wow, that sounds emo… “I’m just trying to feel something, please, someone help.” But here’s my point. Whereas successful family movies are able to make even your fifty-year-old macho father shed a tear (my dad practically lost his shit during Inside Out) this movie didn’t accomplish anything close to the sort. And it wanted to. So badly. It was practically begging to reach inside your chest and rip your heart out or make it flutter with joy and it just plainly did not. The film’s main premise, when boiled down to its essence, is that Sonic is this lonely orphan whose only true desire in the world is to make a real friend. And then, ultimately, he finds that and so much more after forming a new family with James Marsden’s character and his wife. Cute right? Except it wasn’t. It tried so hard and I think that’s actually the problem. It’s disconcerting how badly they wanted to make the audience care. The filmmakers had the right goal in mind but just couldn’t find the storytelling tools to get it done.

In the end, although its reviews shocked me, this film proved to be exactly what I expected and unquestionably nothing more.

Scoring Rubric: (On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the most predictable)

• Plot – 5/5
• Jim Carrey – 5/5
• Successful CGI corrections – 1/5
• The child next to me nearly spewing out his ICEE in response to Sonic farting – 5/5

Overall score: 4/5 (Snooze fest. Label me disappointed.)

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Just in case you haven’t seen that series of SNL sketches I mentioned earlier, or even if you have and you just want to watch again, I’m leaving this here for your viewing pleasure. Best thing Jim Carrey’s done in the last decade. Pitch-perfect satire.

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Source for critics and audience scores: Rotten Tomatoes

Altpress article: https://www.altpress.com/news/sonic-the-hedgehog-release-date-moved/