Starring: James Marsden, Ben Schwartz, Tika Sumpter, Jim Carrey

Directed by Jeff Fowler

Paramount, out now

Sonic lives a quiet life hiding on Earth having fled from his home and those who wanted to take his power. But when he accidentally lets loose a burst of that power he attracts the attention of the US government who bring in eccentric genius Doctor Robotnik to trace the source. Now Sonic is on the run again, with a new friend in tow.

Videogame to movie adaptations don’t have the best reputation, and there tends to be a reason. From Super Mario Bros to Street Fighter, it’s very difficult to fit an interesting narrative around characters who are designed to achieve simple linear tasks in often outlandish environments. Last year, the internet nearly melted down with the fury of people who saw the first Sonic the Hedgehog trailer and were unhappy with the bizarre appearance of the titular hero, causing the studio to literally go back and re-do every frame of FX involving him. Did it help? Well, kinda.

The issue with Sonic is less to do with its looks and very much more to do with its tone and narrative. It feels as if at some point a very different version of this movie had been envisioned and even possibly part shot, and then a very different direction was decided upon. The result is an inconsistency that threads through the entire thing, leaving it very unsatisfying for older viewers although probably just about passable enough for kids.

Emblematic of this issue is Jim Carrey as villain Doctor Robotnik. You’d think given the palette, style and target audience of the movie that you’d be getting a classic Carrey performance here, all flailing double jointed limbs, rubbery faces and high-pitched, motormouth delivery. What we get instead is a sort of subdued version of the actor which starts slow and becomes almost glacial as the film progresses. Indeed, his first scene, spoiled already in trailers, is the literal high point of his appearance in the movie. Too mean to either be funny or appealing, the performance feels as though it belongs in a very different movie.

James Marsden, for his part, does a more than competent job as a sort of Jon Arbuckle type everyman. A small town cop with dreams of heading to the big city, he finds himself unwillingly dragged into Sonic’s troubles in a weird sort of contrivance of narrative whereby Sonic has basically been stalking him and his wife, thinking of them as his ‘friends’ and then coincidentally ends up at their house when he’s on the run from Robotnik and his drones. It’s not a setup that’ll win any awards for originality but to his credit, Marsden takes it all as seriously as he can and his chemistry with Ben Schwartz is strong enough that they just about get away with it, without ever being in any danger of taking the thing anywhere above firmly middle of the road in terms of quality.

Whoever was in charge of the VFX obviously liked the Quicksilver scenes in the latter X-Men movies as the trick is used by our little blue friend here in a couple of extended sequences. It’s entertaining enough in a goofy way and kids (if the audience I was among are any indication) will love it but it really ends up mainly riffing off gags that those other films did elsewhere without bringing any real originality to the table.

It even raises some laughs as Sonic and Marsden’s Tom go on their road trip to retrieve the necessary MacGuffin – nothing here is bad by any means, just painfully average and wildly inconsistent in tone. References that will mean something to older audiences who grew up with the games will be lost on the younger audiences that most of the film seems to be aiming for, and don’t really do enough to win over those older members either. They also just don’t work as part of the narrative. As an example, Sonic at a certain point just starts calling Robotnik Eggman – a reference to the character’s original name in the Japanese games. But here there’s no reason for it – I think the implication is supposed to be that it’s a reference to the mostly spherical shapes of Robotnik’s drones, but as it never really gets any explanation it’s just left there as one more thing that doesn’t really make sense.

Perhaps the movie’s single biggest letdown is that it never really explains much of anything. An exhilarating opening sequence ends far too suddenly after some half-baked exposition dump from a character we barely spend any time with anyway, and then the film just dumps Sonic on Earth and shrugs. If he’s an alien, why is he a Hedgehog? If he’s a Hedgehog, why is he blue? What’s the source and exact nature of his power? Where did it come from? Why do people want to steal it? More time is spent on explaining the nature of his rings (a collectible in the game, here turned into a plot-driving widget) than any of these other things, and the rings get about two lines of dialogue explanation. Who makes them, why they do what they do, how they actually work – all left as mysterious as everything else.

If it had just committed to being a proper kids film, with Carrey unbound to go full Ace Ventura-era whacky, fewer references to games that are now nearly three decades old, and more of the extensive gallery of characters the source material has to draw on, it might have made itself better, or at least more unique. As it is, it’s a bland, predictable, passable enough bit of schmaltz that’s likely to entertain kids as long as its on and be instantly forgotten as soon as the credits have finished rolling. A post credits scene makes it clear that a sequel was planned, but I guess the box office will determine whether that ever happens.

Verdict: Difficult to believe that the mascot who once ruled the world has been reduced to this. It’ll probably keep the kids quiet, but any adult fans looking for a nostalgia hit won’t find it here. 5/10

Greg D. Smith