'Sonic The Hedgehog 3' Review - Well, My Son Liked It A Lot...
Action and fan service take (comparatively speaking) the priority over character comedy in Sega and Paramount's busy, big-scale and overly frantic video game sequel.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024)
109 minutes
rated PG (action, some violence, rude humor, thematic elements, and mild language)
Directed by Jeff Fowler
Written by Pat Casey, Josh Miller and John Washington
Produced by Neal H. Mortiz, Yob, Toby Ascher, Toru Nakahara and Hitoshi Okuno
Starring: Ben Schwartz, Jim Carrey, Keanu Reeves, Krysten Ritter, Idris Elba, James Marsden, Colleen O'Shaughnessey, Tika Sumpter, Natasha Rothwell, Shemar Moore
Cinematography by Brandon Trost
Editing by Al LeVine
Music by Tom Holkenborg
Production companies - Paramount Pictures, Sega Sammy Group, Original Film, Marza Animation Planet and Blur Studio
Opening theatrically the week of December 20 courtesy of Paramount Pictures
Of course, after we spend a large portion of a podcast episode discussing how Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog is an example of a successful present-tense franchise that prioritizes crowdpleasing, of-the-moment entertainment over franchise lore and fan service, we end up with Sonic the Hedgehog 3, which… puts a little too much emphasis on fan service and lore. It’s not Rise of Skywalker awful; there’s zero fandom gatekeeping. Still, it’s a frantic, incident-heavy flick that relies on “fans know and want this” brownie points to paper over comparatively sloppy and disjointed storytelling. That said, while we both agreed that Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is the best of the series and arguably the happy medium in terms of balancing the brand and the movie, my 13-year-old had a fine time and preferred this one to the first comparatively grounded Sonic the Hedgehog.
While it’s perhaps silly to complain that a Sonic movie spends too little time with its human cast, you’ll miss the comparatively (but not entirely) absent likes of James Marsden, Tika Sumpter and Natasha Rothwell. Jim Carrey’s Dr. Robotnik (giving the most and looking surprisingly statuesque while doing it) is essentially a cartoon character, and pairing him with his grandfather means double the zany. The remaining humans (including new-to-the-franchise Krysten Ritter) are mostly straight-laced military types. Sonic 3 quickly becomes focused on comedic cartoon characters interacting with each other, with a few human foils amusingly reacting to the tomfoolery. Characters like Idris Elba’s deadpan himbo Knuckles are funnier when interacting with the real world, and the impact sometimes resembles the conflict with Austin Powers 2, which took a swinging 60s superspy and put him… back to the 1960s.
That said, as an action fantasy aimed at younger kids (or older fans refreshingly not insisting that the franchise age up in terms of violence and intensity), Sonic the Hedgehog 3 leans into the sci-fi fantasy lore and “mythology” without taking itself too seriously. In terms of being a more straightforward action movie focused on its non-human marquee characters, it’s closer to Transformers: Dark of the Moon without going remotely hardcore regarding city-destroying carnage. Jokes aside, the vengeful Shadow (Keanu Reeves, using his trademark verbal restraint to suggest a creature in too much emotional pain to be verbose) does not drop bodies left and right, nor does “The Donut Lord” lecture Sonic about how, in his desperation, Dr. Robotnik turned to a creature he didn’t truly understand. Nor does the film, pardon the vagueness, wimp out detailing Shadow’s origin story.
Nonetheless, there is a particular stitched-together nature at work in the plotting and stilted character interactions, which were absent in its predecessors. Whether there’s contextual material or character beats on the cutting room floor, or there was a push-pull in making Shadow a more potent threat without undercutting the gee-whiz tone, I can only speculate; the pacing is off throughout the 109-minute feature, even if it leads to a rousing conclusion. I don’t know whether this is Robotnik’s final frontier, but his proverbial sendoff is so damn impressive as a finale to the character and, frankly, Carrey’s run as a mainstream, big studio comic actor that I genuinely hope they move on for Sonic 4. We get some cookie credits about what might come next. No spoilers, but sadly, it’s not Echo the Dolphin or Victy the Boxing Kangaroo.
My own nitpicks aside; it is incredibly impressive that Sega and Paramount offered up a $122 million fantasy action comedy centered on mostly CGI-animated anthropomorphic talking animals that A) is as convincing as they need to be in terms of special effects and B) offer a level of spectacle that would have been unthinkable after watching the first $85 million flick just 4.5 years ago. I hope everyone got paid and nobody got pixel-fucked, but the effects are impressive, seamless and offhandedly casual in a way that shouldn’t go unnoticed. I’ve been saying since the first Sonic that video games can be and should be the next place to craft new-to-cinema franchises. Sonic 3 offers evidence that even mid-budget video game fantasies can deliver action and spectacle on par with what used to be the exclusive domain of big-budget superhero flicks.
As Jeremy and Lisa affirmed on the podcast, Sonic the Hedgehog has the deepest rogues’ gallery bench outside Batman, Spider-Man, and The Flash. There’s no reason this franchise can’t become a video game version of the 007 series, with one film every two or three years pitting Sonic’s expanding surrogate family against another fan-friendly threat. There will be moviegoers and fans who won’t be as disappointed with this comparatively fan-targeted chapter. Think of The Expendables, where the first film is a better movie, but the sequel offered more of what was desired from the franchise. Jeff Fowler’s Sonic 3 doesn’t resemble an abomination or a moral outrage. I’m only underwhelmed by a threequel that is only as good as we all expected the first film to be. Next time out, the Blue Blur needs to slow down a little bit.
