Film Review: SONIC THE HEDGEHOG (2020): Another Peculiar Entry in the Uncanny Valley of Hollywood-Adapted IPs

Sonic the Hedgehog Review

Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) Film Review, a movie directed by Jeff Fowler, and starring Ben Schwartz, James Marsden, Jim Carrey, Tika Sumpter, Natasha Rothwell, Adam Pally, Lee Majdoub, Neal McDonough, Tom Butler, Frank C. Turner, Melody Nosipho Niemann, Shannon Chan-Kent, Brad Kelly, Elfina Luk, and Garry Chalk.

We are living in very strange times.

In Hollywood the Almighty IP is God, and we are its humble congregants. Anything and everything can be coerced to have lateral appeal, as long as we are willing to endure it for the occasional tithe of admission. But now, in this post-postmodernist age in which we find ourselves flailing about, IPs are no longer constricted by the norms of the cinematic medium to which they’re adapted. Knowledge no longer needs to be contained to the narrative’s crafted world, because everything is just a reference to a reference to a reference…or at least has the potential to be. Lateral appeal is no longer concerned with how much money can be made in a film adaptation of a videogame, but rather how memeable something will be to creating cultural talking points and social media pings. We’re passed the point of corporate self-awareness, where the multi-billion-dollar companies shoot us a wink to let us know that they know that we know about their whole capitalistic scheme, and that they hope to make us think their metatextual acknowledgment of this fact is in fact constructive criticism. It’s a formula of quick recognitions with an apathetic vibe, and an incredibly cynical step in the evolution of corporate media. But alas…these companies still largely set the boundaries of what is and isn’t permissible in the wider cultural zeitgeist…so it can be amusing (and perhaps even welcome) to see them push the limits of it here and there.

And of course this is all complementary to (and possibly even borne of) the fact that we’re currently living through a worldwide pandemic and climate catastrophe while our fascist-adjacent political leaders on both sides of the aisle flounder about with both puerile greed and crass ineptitude.

Again…strange times.

That’s all to say that Sonic the Hedgehog, the most recent videogame adaptation to hit the silver screen, is another foray into this late-2010s cinema that is self-aware about how it just doesn’t care.

Personally speaking, I was never much of a Sonic fan. I never played the any of the SEGA video game franchises, and I never watched the multitude of shows that they spun off. I wasn’t much of a video game person at all, actually. (If I had to identify, I was more of a Nintendo fan myself – Pokémon, Mario Bros., and Kirby were more my speed.)

But as anyone who grew up online in the 2000s and has the vaguest connection to online discourse would know, the description of the Sonic fandom as “massive” would be an understatement. You can’t go anywhere in cyberspace without tripping over a DeviantArt fan drawing of a Sonic OC at least once, and if you spent your high school days wasting time watching YouTube Poops over and over you’d recognize Long John Baldry’s voice shouting Dr. Eggman’s misinterpreted exclamations anywhere. Sonic is just another one of those things that we’ve all absorbed via cultural osmosis. You don’t have to know about it, but rather just know of it, and you’ll be  just fine.

At least that’s what it feels like Fowler’s approach was in his feature-length directorial debut. He’s forced to straddle that weird divide of appealing to both the genuine fans of the Sonic brand as well as terminally-online, irony-poisoned posters who are here for the cheap laugh (or at least to see if that three-month delay to fix the design that the Internet collectively lost its mind over actually panned out). And like such a divide, the final film both works and doesn’t work because of it.

Sonic (manically voiced by Parks & Rec’s Ben Schwartz) carries a lot of the film’s emotional brevity, as he’s distraught by the loss of his home world and his lack of friendship. He’s alone on this new planet of Earth, and we’re meant to feel his anguish through teary-eyed ponderings and swelling music cues. But at the same time he’s abandoned and adrift in an unknown world – one where he needs to create a “bucket list” (a term that he doesn’t even comprehend) of things to complete before he leaves – he’s still has an innate understanding of earthly trinkets such as mousepads and, for some oddly outdated reason, ZZ Top.

The film’s human components – including his reluctant sheriff companion Tom Wachowski (James Marsden), Tom’s wife Maddie (Tika Sumpter), and the mad scientist who’s apparently also a military black ops director Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey) – are the film’s most cartoonish aspects, which is a fine inversion of expectations. At least, until screenwriters Casey and Miller feel the need to shoehorn an identity conflict into Tom’s character. It’s adding depth in a tacked-on way, and just draws attention to the more thinly-drawn conflicts in the other characters’ lives (mainly, Maddie’s all-too-easy-going nature with Tom to the point of being a caricature, and her sister’s dismissive attitude towards him off the bat as nothing more than the bad in-law archetype).

Sonic the Hedgehog is one of those IP adaptations along the lines of DreamWorks’ Trolls or Warner Animation Group’s Storks, wherein the filmmakers seem to know it’s just a money-grab and thus think they can get away with lazy writing as long as they sort of acknowledge their own shortcomings. Rather than work to better craft a story or characters, they’re more content to fill an all-ages film with a lack of cohesive universe rules or character arcs, while also edging the PG rating to its limits in sort of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, not-super-inappropriate-but-not-really-kid-friendly ways. I guess PG-rated movies really can just casually mention drug-dealing now, or drop lines like “Look what came out of my egg sac” here and there. (Also, how many kids watching this is gonna know what Zillow is?)

And again, it’s sort of impressive that these large studios will just let this all slide. A more charitable interpretation would be that it’s as a sign that the gatekeepers are shifting with the times and becoming more flexible about sort of content they think audiences (or Internet-addled kids in particular) will be able to handle; a more sardonic read would be the utter astonishment of watching the creative bankruptcy of these giant corporations being uncaringly writ large. It’s fascinating and disappointing all at the same time. Not very surprising, especially when Deadpool’s Tim Miller is on your list of producers, but still…straddling that divide, yet again.

There are positive things on the other side of that divide, too. Fowler and his animation team do a brilliant job of visualizing the ability of Sonic’s rings and the fantasy-like physics of their functionality. It’s a fun and creative element to the story, and also serves as the best argument for a feature-length Portal adaptation down the road. Carrey chews his scenes aptly, and while Dr. Robotnik is not his most chaotic performance to date it definitely leaves you willing to check out any potential future rehashes (which a final scene very well suggests). Stephen F. Windon brings his eclectic cinematography over from the Fast & Furious franchise to shocking success, which really adds to the speed-heavy action sequences. And of course, a Junkie XL score is always a treat.

In the end, Sonic the Hedgehog is another one of those good-bad/bad-good adaptations that is inevitable in our current state of the world. It is the alpha and omega of corporate IP potential, for better or for worse. I’d say go and see it if you don’t take my word, but you’ll probably just soak it up through cultural osmosis regardless.

Rating: 5/10

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