Movie Thoughts: Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)

• Released: 14 Februari 2020
• Directed by: Jeff Fowler
• Running time: 1 h 39 min
• Rating 3.5/5

Synopsis

A super-fast hedgehog from a different planet lands on Earth and is being chased by the nefarious Dr. Robotnik. With his newfound friend, a small-town cop, Sonic tries to avoid his nemesis and obtain a bag of magical rings he needs for traveling across the universe.

My Thoughts

Full disclosure: I have zero context for the Sonic lore going into this movie. I never played the games, never watched any of the cartoons. I only know him from the memes, so basically my only context for this going in was "he's a hedgehog and he goes fast". I didn't even know why he needed rings. Anyways, let's talk about the movie.

Originally I didn't plan on seeing it because of how I have zero interest in the games/cartoons, however after I saw everyone praising it for two years now I decided to finally give it a go. And it was...decent, bordering on good?

Okay, so I'm no big fan of "CGI-creature interacts with normal human life"-type of movies. Stuff like Hop (2011), Alvin and the Chipmunks (2007) and The Smurfs (2011)... It's just not my taste. But this movie is definitely one of the few of this genre I do like.

Sonic is a likable character, and honestly so is Tom. They're not groundbreaking characters by any record, but I do like how they were executed and how you see them bonding. They do sprout a pretty genuine-feeling relationship over the course of the movie. The character that really steals the show, however, is Dr. Robotnik. Jim Carrey was clearly having a lot of fun in this role, and it's pretty amusing to see him go from a (relatively) normal dude to a live-action version of the cartoon you see in the games, huge mustache and all. And he'll probably be back in the sequel, so that's fun.

The animation on Sonic was also good and he blended in well with his surroundings. Everyone has heard of the horror story of the original Sonic design in this film, which looked absolutely uncanny valley and just downright disgusting. I'm glad that they changed it. It does absolutely suck that in the end the company that worked all these hours to redesign Sonic and re-implement the new design into the movie went bankrupt and a lot of people were laid off. Honestly reminds me of the story behind Life of Pi. where the people who brought the tiger to life using CGI also were laid off in the end. 

One criticism I do have for the movie: Sonic's age is very hard to pinpoint. Okay, so in the prologue we see him as an obvious child, but he is quickly sent to Earth where he grows older. And honestly, all movie I thought he was in his early twenties, a young adult, mostly because of his voice. But then I looked it up and he's supposed to be like 13 in this movie. This does explain some of his interactions with Tom (where Sonic acts way more juvenile), but at the same time his design and voice just don't really sell this age at all. He sounds too old and his design looks more young-adult proportion-wise to me. His voice actor does fine performance-wise, don't get me wrong, but just doesn't sound like a teenager of this age usually would. Just something I thought I'd mention.

So overall I did genuinely enjoy this movie. It was pretty funny and could be heartfelt. Not my favorite film, obviously, and I still feel absolutely no connection to the Sonic brand, but I had a good time.