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Sonic the Hedgehog Movie Review: Jim Carrey is the saving grace to this cliched and monotonous storyline
Sonic the Hedgehog Movie Review: Jim Carrey brings back the 90s era charm and literally saves the Jeff Fowler directorial from sinking deep. No matter how adorable Sonic may look, the cliched and monotonous storyline deeply dampens the video game live-adaptation film.
Movie Name: Sonic The Hedgehog
Sonic The Hedgehog Cast: Ben Schwartz, Jim Carrey, James Marsden, Tika Sumpter
Sonic The Hedgehog Director: Jeff Fowler
Sonic The Hedgehog Stars: 2.5/5
The recent supply of video game live-action adaptations has more often than not bombed spectacularly at the box-office. The constant strive to instill nostalgia in the minds of adults while keeping children as the target audience is a hard gamble! Sonic The Hedgehog may work wonders for a child, but the fans who grew up playing the game will be deeply disappointed! Even with the change in Sonic's features, after nationwide criticism, Jeff Fowler's directorial is a big, dull dud!
Taking inspiration from movies like ET, Sonic The Hedgehog traces the buddy-cop friendship between the extraterrestrial creature Sonic (voiced by the overtly enthusiastic Ben Schwartz) and Tom Wachowski (James Marsden). After Sonic is been determined as a national-level threat to humanity, the fast-flying playful 'alien' befriends Tom and the two set on an adventure to help the hedgehog escape from Earth, a place he has come to love. However, every hero needs a villain and taking the reigns is Jim Carrey as mad scientist Dr. Robotnik, with a beard as exaggerated as the actor playing it. Proving to be a thorn in Sonic's life, the hedgehog literally has to run for his life to come out as the hero, rather than become a villain himself.
Firstly, to the positives, Jim oozes life into a dull, cliched supervillain and brings back all the reasons as to why the comedian was loved in the first place. Yes! We're talking about the 90's Carrey! His physical performance is well-balanced out, even though it's supposed to be over the top. That was always the charm of Mr. Carrey and it's what he excels at, even though Robotnik looks strikingly similar to Him from the Powerpuff Girls. Ben breathes life into the beloved SEGA video game character and tries to add the right drama in order to intrigue, but because of the monotonous 'been there, done that' storyline, his voice does little to save the film. Even James Marsden, who is criminally talented for his own good, is reduced to a stereotypical character with zero depth. There's a lot missing in the supposed camaraderie between Sonic and Tom and if it weren't for Jim, there was nothing significant enough to pay your hard-earned money for.
When it comes to the VFX, the changes made were evident, especially in Sonic as it paid homage to the video game version, rather than making it humanised. I am still traumatised by the teeth, btw! There are some genuinely well thought out sequences like when Sonic plays a game of baseball all by himself and even when Sonic causes a ruckus in a redneck bar and in true Quicksilver style from X-Men: Apocalypse, saves the day by rectifying everything in slow motion.
What lacks deeply in Sonic The Hedgehog is the washed-out storyline that should have been done and dusted, a long time ago! It's almost as if everything in the film was riding on the adorableness of Sonic and in the process, writers Pat Casey and Josh Miller forget the difference between a video game and a movie is storytelling.
In a room full of adults, who spent their early years mastering the game, they were left cheated and did not laugh (at all!) during any of the supposedly funny one-liners. Even the eventual ending did not have the fast and furious spark that a movie on Sonic truly deserved. While kids may still be entertained to a point, Sonic The Hedgehog has zero reasons for its existence, apart from being a cash cow!
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