The Super Powered Fancast

Sonic The Hedgehog 2

Paramount Pictures

Written by Pat Casey, Josh Miller and John Whittington

Directed by Jeff Fowler

Starring James Marsden, Jim Carrey, Ben Schwartz, Tika Sumpter, Idris Elba, Natasha Rothwell, Adam Pally, Shemar Moore, Lee Majdoub, Colleen O’Shaugnessey, Melody Nosipho Niemann and Tom Butler

Rated PG

When the manic Dr Robotnik returns to Earth with a new ally, Knuckles the Echidna, Sonic and his new friend Tails is all that stands in their way.

Sonic the Hedgehog is back with a new adventure.

After defeating Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey), Sonic (Schwartz) finds himself struggling to be the hero he thinks he’s destined to be, but this is not where the movie starts. The movie begins with Jim Carrey’s Robotnik trapped on the planet he was left on at the end of the last movie and giving a full on 1990’s Jim Carrey performance for the first ten minutes of the film. The scenes are classic Jim Carrey with hints of everything from The Mask to Ace Ventura in the physical comedy department as his character has a twisted Castaway montage before being discovered by another character.

Back on Earth, Sonic has decided to become a hero and his hero’s journey will be the crux of the plot along with themes of found family. He deals with his self-doubt and other issues with his found family of Tom and Maddie (James Marsden and Tika Sumpter). The chemistry between the characters is really good, but both leads get relegated to background characters as the rest of the supporting cast is introduced by having them go on vacation while the rest of the plot happens in and around Green Hills.

When Robotnik teams up with an Echidna named Knuckles (Idris Elba), he is able to return to Earth where they both hunt down Sonic. While Robotnik is out for revenge, Knuckles is in search of a mystical emerald that is your basic video game McGuffin kicking off the rest of the story as Sonic and his new friend Tails (Colleen O’Shaugnessey) go in search of the emerald on Earth through a series of clues with Knuckles and Robotnik on their tails (no pun intended). O’Shaugnessey has been the voice of Tails since 2014 and it was fun hearing that familiar voice in the film.

There’s a lot of action and adventure in the film but the story and a lot of the humor falls flat. The action elements are big and visually exciting throughout, but there is a lack of character development with Sonic who is thrown into situations and not required by the plot to change or evolve to overcome them. None of that particularly matters given the nature of the film and the audience it’s targeting. Full disclosure, I took my teenage son to the movie who is a huge Sonic fan since he was small and he loved every callback and reference to the video games as well as the finale. He is definitely the target audience for the film and why it was fun to watch.

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 is a big, ambitious and ultimately fun movie going experience. While it has its faults story and character-wise, it is easy to get into and a fun piece of entertainment to experience.