SONIC THE HEDGEHOG

Stars: James Marsden, Jim Carrey, Adam Pally, Tika Sumpter, Neal McDonough, Lee Majdoub and the voice of Ben Schwartz.
Writers: Patrick Casey and Josh Miller.
Director: Jeff Fowler.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

SEGA are very late to the party, but the videogame behemoth’s first deep dive into the Hollywood blockbuster pool* has been worth the wait. After a bumpy detour down the rocky road of social media, Sonic the Hedgehog hits the ground running in Paramount’s crowdpleasing, funny, spirited comedy/adventure romp.

Since its debut for the SEGA Genesis system in 1991, the little blue hedgehog with a cracking turn of speed has been a console megastar and inevitable talk of a film adaptation has been around almost as long. In 1994, it was set to film at MGM, then Dreamworks circled a treatment before Hollywood put it in the ‘too hard’ basket (the shadow of rival Nintendo’s mega-bomb Super Mario Bros darkened the prospects of many vidgame adaptations at the time). Sony Pictures Animation acquired the moribund rights in 2014 but stuttered, allowing Paramount to snap it up (the ‘mountain studio’ come to party, substituting the game’s gold rings for their own ‘flying stars’ in the opening logo).

SEGA execs have treated the brand extension of their flagship property with kid gloves, and some may say that the eventual emergence of Sonic as a ‘Roger Rabbit’-type funny-guy in a safe, middle America-set live-action/animated hybrid lacks daring ambition. But with the motor-mouth funny-guy Ben Schwartz voicing the confident critter and a bare-bones but effective narrative that allows for comedy and action beats to breath, debutant feature director Jeff Fowler (working under the wing of his hitmaking production partner, Deadpool director Tim Miller) exhibits storytelling skill and commercial instincts.

The fantasy landscape of the videogame is the setting for the film’s prologue, and it looks beautiful. Under threat because of his special power, toddler Sonic is plunged through time and space to Green Hills, Montana, where he grows into a remarkably well-adjusted albeit very lonely teenage blue hedgehog. In a momentary fit of pique, his energy surge blacks out the town and is noticed by military types, who descend upon the burg. Escaping their prying technology, Sonic is thrust into the life of Sheriff Tom Wachowski (a typically game James Marsden, who worked a similar schtick in the 2011 Easter Bunny dud, Hop) and they hit the road to San Francisco to recover Sonic’s missing pouch of gold rings.

Hot on their heels is the villainous Dr Robotnik, played with the unique comic energy of another megastar from the 1990s, one Jim Carrey. In his first fully frantic comedic turn since the underwhelming Dumb and Dumber To in 2014, Carrey certainly looks more mature but proves no less hilariously elastic in the bad guy role. He is clearly having a lot of fun (often at the expense of his unlucky offsider Agent Stone, played with good grace by Lee Majdoub) and his masterful ability to deliver all-or-nothing physical hilarity and throwaway lines is the pic’s biggest asset.

The main question hanging over the delayed release of Sonic the Hedgehog is, was the delay worth it? That is, was it worth sending the film back to the effects team to counter the bleating of the fanboys who lost their collective cool when the Sonic trailer first appeared in April 2019? Well, it was worth it, as the character looks great, although had the film just pushed through the web white noise it probably would have stood on its own merits.

*To date, the only US feature-length live action adaptations of SEGA properties have been Uwe Boll’s House of The Dead (2003) and its sequel (2005), directed by Michael Hurst. In 2007, Takashi Miike directed the Japanese feature Like a Dragon/Ryū ga Gotoku Gekijōban, based upon the Playstation 2 game, Yakuza.