Rings of Power: SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3

I have no defense of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 except that I was once an 11-year-old boy. My adult self sat watching this sequel slightly bored by the shiny, proficient formula on screen. If you’ve seen director Jeff Fowler’s first two Sonic the Hedgehog movies, this will be totally familiar—a simply plotted, gently silly scurry across brightly-lit colorful settings while the super-speedy animated blue hedgehog of Sega video game fame tries to protect his adopted human family, and the world, from the villainous machinations of evil scientist Jim Carrey. These are narratively flimsy, emotionally shallow, predictably told cartoon-logic movies. And yet, sometimes movies like this invite the Ghost of Moviegoer Past to step in and watch instead of the Present for a while. In that spirit, I had a good time. This isn’t even the best Sonic movie—that’s 2 by a nose, a perfectly pleasant pileup of kids’ adventure cliches and a good balance of human funny business. But 3 and the others are movies I would’ve enjoyed as a boy. It has likable leads with a funny ensemble, and a brisk pace with varied and imaginative-enough adventure sequences. This one has an early hedgehog versus motorcycle chase down a busy Tokyo street, and later a fight in a vault with tiles that are randomly anti- or extra-gravity. There’s just enough cleverness there. And then there’s Carrey hamming it up, this time in a double role as the villain and his own grandfather. His antics along with the Sega aesthetics are key 90s throwbacks. Is it any wonder the movie has two of the humans high-five and declare it “best decade ever?”

If the common complaint of the first picture was that it put Sonic in the passenger seat to pleasant live-action family comedy from James Marsden, Tika Sumpter, and Natasha Rothwell, this third Sonic goes the other way. It reduces the humans to glorified cameos and spends most of its time with Sonic (Ben Schwartz) and pals Tails (Colleen O'Shaugnessey) and Knuckles (Idris Elba) on the hunt for an evil hedgehog named Shadow (Keanu Reeves) who escaped containment in a secret base and is rampaging across the world looking for revenge against those who captured him. We get lots of flashbacks explaining why he’s upset, and seeding the ground for his eventual change of heart. (Though weirdly it is unacknowledged how one key character in those flashbacks has to be closely related to a key character in the present.) This series, like Fast and Furious before it, is very good about setting up villains to become sidekicks in future entries. And, better than Marvel lately, knows how to tease a new character in the credits of one entry and pay it off immediately in the next. (And easily incorporates events of a streaming series quickly, too.) This might be the ideal form of the modern franchise: cheap, efficient, reliable quality and return on investment, self-referential and fan-flattering without bogging down in self-seriousness, and exactly as ambitious as its target audience wants. It’ll never be great, but it’s always consistent.  Bring on Sonic 4!

Quick Trip: SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2

Would I have liked Sonic the Hedgehog 2 when I was 11 years old? Certainly. The whole thing feels built from a checklist of everything an 11-year-old would love. It has: a plucky boyish hero with a bit of an attitude, space critters in different primary colors and with complementary abilities, magic portals, little robots, big robots, video game sound effects, lasers, explosions, fast cars, swimming pools, flatulence, a music montage of home-alone misbehavior, baseball, volleyball, skateboarding, Rube Goldberg machines, a treasure map, ice cream, magic birds, a ruined wedding, secret agents, improbable gadgets, impenetrable lore, video game logic, an avalanche, a hidden temple with booby traps and ancient magic jewels, biplanes, golf carts, a mountain tavern where tough guys have dance-offs, non-threatening military men who say things like “My God!” while staring at clouds of special effects, and a cast that includes Jim Carrey returning to wacky mode as the villain while everyone else is either comic relief or standing around to cheer the heroes on. All of the above is presented brightly and plainly, with total earnestness and jokes only a fifth grader would enjoy. The only problem is that I’m not 11 any more.

The sequel is undeniably leveled up in some ways from the first hit movie based on the classic Sega game starring the eponymous blue super-speedy hedgehog. That one somehow stranded Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz) as a passenger on a road trip with a human cop (James Marsden) and his fiancé (Tika Sumpter) for most of the way, though the glowing-portal action sequences and Carrey’s literal mustache twirling like it was 1994 again were reasonably enjoyable. It’s now bigger and louder and more stuffed with character and incident and running around. (Though weirdly Sonic still isn’t consistently using his super speed to its most effective escape potentials.) But it’s also just more of the same, cartoony effects in a formulaic story scurrying around for a couple hours while the score pounds and the subwoofer rumbles before we all learn a valuable lesson about teamwork. Director Jeff Fowler once again does sturdy work framing the live-action and animation, keeping things bright and quick, moving right along. It goes down painlessly. Passable at best, it’s perhaps most interesting for how the first Sonic movie, released February 2020, was the last big blockbuster before the pandemic, and now the filmmakers have managed to make the sequel during it and released as we are hoping to near its end. (Ah, that just leaves war and weather on the apocalypse bingo card.) That gave me the bittersweetly empty feeling that, hey, the world might be ending, but at least we got two reasonably okay Sonic movies. But, you know what they say, you can’t be 11 again.