Sonic the Hedgehog: A Live Action Cartoon About Olive Garden

So I spent Thursday watching Sonic the Hedgehog, and it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected (especially post-CATS), but it still wasn't great. The characters weren't really compelling and to tell the truth I found really none of them to be entertaining, and the story was as likewise. Still, the CGI and overall feel of the film was much better than it easily could have been, and the extra effort put into the remaking of the film definitely shows. It could have been a horror, and it's still not a great film, but it's easily watchable.

My biggest complaint with the climax is that no other characters (apart from Sonic and Robotnik) feel like they matter at all, but without the presence of the other Sonic characters that does make sense unfortunately.

So the story of Sonic the Hedgehog is essentially every Sonic story ever told, except as a prequel with a few key differences. I probably played the original Sonic in Flash format for about five minutes before deeming the whole thing uninteresting when I was ten, so I'm not to be taken as an authority here. We see Sonic's origin and childhood, and to be honest I couldn't care less. Who is the owl lady? Why are there other Sonics in tribal gear? The rings are portals now? How is any of this (barring the rings) important? Basically we eventually get to Earth and Sonic essentially lives life as a vagabond, and eventually encounters the token bland male protagonist. Our male hero (I think his name was Sam, it's really not important) is the sheriff of a rural Montana PD, and sweet Jesus are his compatriots are they the most dimwitted group (and that's saying something), truly the bottom of the barrel. Hell, the sheriff isn't exactly the sharpest tool either. There's also obligatory unnecessary human conflict, which is essentially that Mr. sheriff is moving to San Francisco, out of the only town he's ever known, which adds basically nothing. At least they held back from adding kids to the mix, so there's that element of restraint. Soon the pair meet-up, and they quickly develop an alliance that eventually turns into a somewhat sweet friendship, but they're dogged at every step by the wacky and cartoonish Doctor Robotnik, played with perfect camp by Jim Carrey. No joke, even though it's wacky, the extent to which Jim Carrey goes nuts is actually really impressive, and it helps sell this film as some sort of Saturday morning cartoon. Besides this though, the story's largely unremarkable, and falls flat quite often. There's this scene where a bar fight is brewing, and instead of showing his badge or otherwise try to diffuse the situation, the sheriff literally just jumps in, and it's so frustrating. What is the point of him being the sheriff of a town if there's literally no point to that part of his character? He could be a cubicle-bound drone and that would come up more, but I digress. They also try to have these unearned emotional beats, and we get the trifecta of them feeling unwarranted, inauthentic, and excessive in volume. To summarize, each and every emotional beat from Sonic's character is essentially 'I have no friends, I'm so depressed, could you be my friend?'. It was really frustrating too that this ended up being the big twist reveal, that friendship was the real power all along. It could have worked, but it was just numbing and in the end had less than zero impact on me, I actually laughed when I realized that this was the 'big' development. There's also a really heavy presence of Olive Garden in this film. I don't think I've ever seen this level of advertising in a movie before. We've seen plenty of car advertisements semi-subtly placed in films before, but this was a whole other level of excess and force. Needless to say, I did not want to go to Olive Garden after this film, and I daresay that I will never go there at any point in my life (not that this film played a role in that). In summary, Sonic's story isn't very strong or remarkable, but it's easy to understand with a novel Saturday morning cartoon feel, and that's when the film's story works best, when it fully embraces the zany antics and developments.

Carrey's cartoonish characterization actually really helped this film for me, it just feels more legitimate for it somehow despite how utterly batshit his performance is. Good stuff.

Technically, Sonic could have been worse than CATS, and I'm not joking. The first trailer was so awful that the backlash lead to Sonic's character being redesigned and pushed back to this year, and this was after they finished the CGI the first time. The end result though, wasn't all that bad though, it's actually pretty cool-looking by how much they stuck to the original Sonic look, and the CGI throughout the film is pretty good-looking. I did find myself becoming strangely fixated on Sonic's feet due to all the focus on them, and for some reason I found thinking them both horrifying and captivating, like some bit of forbidden knowledge. We get a half-glimpse of Sonic's mutant feet at one point, and I pray to God that this hasn't awoken something in me. There's some weird scenes that are essentially copies of the Quicksilver scenes from the X-Men reboots, but I mean they're two super fast characters, so it felt excusable. They actually do a good deal of sight gags in the bar fight and some other scenes, and this is a great contributor to the cartoon look. The sheriff's house is also pretty weird, given that he's basically living in one that would be way out of any sheriff or officer's price range unless they're chief of a major city or are pretty corrupt (wait a minute...). I didn't find the soundtrack of Sonic to really have any pull on me at all, I hardly noticed it, but no fear, the nigh-constant moaning and wailing of the other small children in the theatre added a nice surreal quality to the experience. No idea why they chose 'gangsta's paradise' for the trailer music, what year is it? I had no idea why they'd be leaning into the Bad Boys-type movie vibe.

Now don't get me wrong, Sonic is really not a terribly good film, but however much I enjoyed dissecting it for each and every stupid thing, it wasn't unenjoyable by any means. It's a textbook example of a soon-to-be cult classic, and it also deserves a lot of credit for going back to the drawing board and redesigning Sonic. I found myself roaring with laughter throughout the film, and while it can truly be an unpleasant film for older viewers (as the permanent cringing expression of my roommate throughout the film can attest), the sheer absurdity of this live-action cartoon is quite impressive. Seriously, go watch this film while it is in theaters, you won't be disappointed to see yet another folly of man before your eyes. I love it.

Sonic's old look that set the internet ablaze. A small part of me is curious to see the original Sonic cut of the film, but we all know that it was a sight no man should be forced to bear witness to.

Next up is probably the best Skyrim mod of all time, or at least the most ambitious.