“Sonic The Hedgehog 3” Review

I suppose I should’ve felt something when this film references the classic blow-in-the-cartridge technique and two Millenials declare that the 1990s were the best decade. I grew up in that era and Sonic the Hedgehog was my favorite game. However, with how deep this film franchise has been reaching into the Sega vault, it has left the 1990s by introducing a new character with a built-in backstory from the 2000s. By this era, I had dropped off from Sonic as the video games descended into a mess of characters and plotlines. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 also marks a dropoff point in the saga of Sonic for me, where the films stop becoming harmless adventure shlock for kids and start taking Sonic lore far too seriously.

The returning anthropomorphic squad returns as Sonic (Ben Schwartz), Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey), and Knuckles (Idris Elba) have to face a new threat to Earth. There’s little time for quips that don’t feel forced into every scene like ill-timed dad jokes masquerading as too-cool-for-fools zingers. The latest alien animal to fight is Shadow (Keanu Reeves), a hedgehog that arrived earlier on Earth and was kept under wraps by a top-secret government program. Wielding chaos energy (essentially an orange version of Sonic’s powers), the black-and-red hedgehog has a hefty dose of pathos. He formed a bond with a little girl during his experiments and her death launched Shadow’s quest for revenge. There’s not much more to the villain than that, taking his revenge so seriously to an almost laughable degree of devotion.

The good news is that the film still has its comedic anchor of Doctor Ivo Robotnik, played again by Jim Carrey who upstages any comedic characters. It always feels like Carrey is in his own world and nobody can play off him. That problem seems most apparent with Carrey’s new partner-in-crime, his aged grandfather Gerald Robotnik, also played by Carrey. There are two Jim Carrey characters in this film and both of them are relatively funny, but their comedy is at its best when they’re interacting with each other and not their world of serious animal aliens or dopey humans. I did laugh a few times when Carrey broke the fourth wall or engaged in a goofy dance with his partner, but my smirk immediately left when the film had to return to its bland story of Shadow desiring to blow up Earth with a giant space laser.

The comedy of the Sonic movies has always been hit or miss, and there are many more misses here than in previous pictures. The darker tone the film tries to take never fully works because the movie never takes its time to make you care about Shadow’s grief, Sonic’s fear of loss, or Robotnik’s longing for family. Everything breezes by so quick that there’s not even much time for comedic detours, where Sonic’s adoptive family of Tom (James Marsden) and Maddie (Maddie Wachowski) are almost afterthoughts, despite Tom’s declaration of Sonic’s moral lesson for this film of teamwork. Even more of an afterthought are the government figures played by Krysten Ritter and Tom Butler in wasted roles of delivering exposition. The film also wants you to still care about Robotnik’s underdog cohort of Stone (Lee Majdoub). However, I didn’t, considering his only gimmick has been coffee and his allegiance to Robotnik is still a mystery I never cared to solve.

Yes, the film has lots of action. There are plenty of explosions and speedy fights between the CGI characters, including a few towards the climax that evoke Dragon Ball Z. But who cares? I never found myself caring for the pathos of Shadow or the plight of Sonic almost losing a friend to relate to Shadow’s bitterness. The limitations of these Sonic movies have been laid bare in this film, where Shadow’s backstory is so briefly addressed and never explored beyond a routine montage of innocence. It always felt like the film was trying to find that balance between the dark and the absurd but never found the right formula. It’s never too funny and never too serious. It’s never much of anything, resulting in more of a blurry noise of action-adventure tropes.

Sonic The Hedgehog 3 tries and fails to make you take this video-game-based world more seriously than it ever needed to be. I could forgive the film’s tedious blow-up-the-earth story if it at least had some funny zingers from Sonic, but those are in very short supply. With Jim Carrey becoming the singular comedic force, Sonic spends most of his time buckling down to battle Shadow, matching his dull sternness with boring action dialogue about fighting. As a character, Sonic used to feel wise enough in pop culture to mock action movie tropes. Now, he’s become that which he has mocked, so engrained in the Sonic lore tunnel vision that he can’t notice the silliness of the situation around him to make a quip.

As with the previous movies, there is yet another mid-credit reveal of another Sonic character that made the fans in the audience cheer louder than anything before the credits rolled. The same thing happened with Sonic 2. At this point, the Sonic films feel less like a continuing story and more like an increasing roster of characters, where the most appealing thing about them seems to be their presence. I care little for this laundry list style of entertainment, and no amount of Carrey comedy bits or video game references can save this film from becoming a bland, blue spectacle that grows tired with every misfiring one-liner.