'Sonic the Hedgehog' Review Thread

Rotten Tomatoes: 61% (31 reviews) with 5.6 in average ratingMetacritic: 43/100 (20 critics)The scores will change as time passes. Meanwhile, I’ll post some short reviews.While Fowler keeps the story moving efficiently, Marsden's easy geniality prevents the simple narrative from feeling rote. Carrey gets a moment or two to cut loose — an evil-genius happy-dance in his lab will likely be mimicked by young viewers on the way out of the theater. Leave it to the made-of-pixels hedgehog to keep racing around the same track year after year and pretending it's new.-John DeFore, The Hollywood ReporterThe good news is that your kids have already been conditioned to worship their corporate gods — to cheer at these stingers the way that people once prayed for rain — and there are definitely worse ways to spend a weekend afternoon. Really lucky parents might even get to hear “look what came out of my egg sac!” parroted back at them for a week or two when they get home. And you thought fixing Sonic’s teeth would make this movie any less of a nightmare.-David Ehrlich, IndieWire: C-Carrey’s moustache-twirling villain is more fun and far more animated than the charmless hero in this derivative caper.-Steve Rose, The Guardian: 2/5While this family-friendly action-comedy suffers from a simplistic story and leans too heavily on tired visual cliches, Sonic the Hedgehog is nevertheless boosted by solid performances from Ben Schwartz and Jim Carrey as Sonic and Dr. Robotnik, respectively. Their ongoing cat-and-mouse game is entertaining, and passionate fans of the Sega franchise should appreciate all the nods to Sonic’s history. Make no mistake, this frantically-paced film is made first and foremost for Sonic fans. If you’ve been there for the little blue fella these past 29 years, from his humble beginnings on the Sega Genesis to his current iteration, then Sonic the Hedgehog is the love letter you’re probably looking for. If not… maybe save your gold rings.-Akeem Lawanson, IGN: 7.0 "Good"Indeed, other than product placement, the movie’s primary goal seems to be delivering 1990s nostalgia. To that end, Jim Carrey gives his most spry, “Ace Ventura”-like performance in years as the know-it-all villain, Dr. Robotnik. Only his physical and verbal contortions (“I was spitting out formulas while you were spitting up formula”) make the film feel remotely animated.-Ben Kenigsberg, The New York TimesSonic the Hedgehog could have gone from a good to a great movie not by bringing Sonic into the human world, but by bringing audiences into his. Maybe we should just be thankful that the movie was watchable at all. Sonic’s success hinges on the character being likable, and the redesigned Sonic is easy to love.-Demi Lee, The VergeFor all the borderline tedium I felt at “Sonic the Hedgehog,” I do realize that this is a picture made for 8-year-olds. And they’ll probably like it just fine. Yet I would also call the overly kiddified tone of the movie a mistake. The protesters who rallied for the changes in Sonic’s design and turned that into a holy cause. As a movie hero, Sonic could, and should, have been hipper and sharper, less megaplex arrested. Even as they fixed his face, the filmmakers strove so hard to make him “likable” that they never figured out a way to make him cool.-Owen Gleiberman, VarietySadly, the rest of Sonic the Hedgehog doesn’t share the manic energy that Sonic and Robotnik bring to the picture. They’re off in something that’s sillier and goofier, but the overall movie demands that they play by the beats of a standard buddy picture/road trip comedy. That formula is fine for what it is, and it gets the job done here, but I wish the filmmakers had taken a bigger, more imaginative swing than settling for just using the Sonic IP, stuffing him into a one-size-fits-all narrative, and calling it a day.-Matt Goldberg, Collider: CThe video game speed freak slowed down to a drab, joyless crawl.-Robbie Collin, The Telegraph: 2/5It’s like Sonic got stuck somewhere between hand-drawn "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" territory and the photorealistic “Lion King” animals, though there are some eye-popping sequences with him doing his speed-demon thing, especially a chase between Sonic and Robotnik that hits various international landmarks and uses the Great Wall of China as a racetrack. The film is fine, familiar fare for gamers and children: Sonic sprints, Carrey mugs, but the creative juices run out quickly.-Brian Truitt, USA TodayIf we wanted to play devil’s advocate, we could make the argument that the reason why something like the Sonic movie is so detached from the rest of the franchise is because it’s trying to reach a wider, more mainstream audience, and having something so rooted in the games could alienate people. But that argument doesn’t really hold water when the perfect counter to it now exists: Detective Pikachu, the live-action Pokémon movie that released last year.-Michael Beckwith, MetroYou could call Sonic The Hedgehog a wannabe E.T., except that might require imagining a version of Steven Spielberg’s classic where the extraterrestrial flosses, makes bad Uber jokes, and lectures Elliot about not appreciating what he already has. The film rises not even above the low bar of your average video game adaptation: Last summer’s Detective Pikachu was lousy, too, but it at least offered some gimcrack spectacle in the spirit of its source material. By contrast, this creatively bankrupt project divorces its title character from both the speed and tropical eye-candy, loop-de-loop backdrops of the Sonic games, dropping him instead into drab roadhouses, suburban kitchens, and the passenger seat of a car chugging down a nondescript highway. Even the scant bursts of action are unremarkable; the best director Jeff Fowler can offer is a weak knockoff of the “Time In A Bottle” sequence from X-Men: Days Of Future Past.-A.A. Dowd, The A.V. Club: D+An on-form Jim Carrey can’t stop Sonic’s live-action debut from feeling like a missed opportunity. If the teased sequels do materialise, here’s hoping the storytelling levels up.-Amon Warmann, Empire: 2/5DIRECTORJeff FowlerWRITERPat Casey & Josh MillerMUSICTom HolkenborgCINEMATOGRAPHYStephen F. WindonEDITORStacey Schroeder & Debra Neil-FisherRelease date:February 14, 2020Budget:$85-95 millionSTARRINGBen Schwartz as SonicJim Carrey as Dr. RobotnikJames Marsden as Tom WachowskiTika Sumpter as Maddie Wachowski via /r/movies https://ift.tt/38omFOr