Tidbit: 'Sonic the Hedgehog' (2020; PG-13)

Sonic the Hedgehog (voiced by Ben Schwartz) is born with superpowers, and there are those who will stop at nothing to harness his abilities for evil ends. One day, some goons come to capture Sonic. To keep him safe, Sonic's owl guardian, Longclaw, sends him to earth, with a bag of gold rings that enable Sonic to open a portal into a new world, to escape danger.

On earth, in Green Hills, Montana, Sonic is safe. Until one night, while playing baseball alone, he runs around the pitch so fast, out of frustration from loneliness, that he causes an energy burst that shuts down electricity supply for miles around. The government summons tech master Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey) to investigate. This eventually puts Robotnik on Sonic's trail, bringing Sonic's lonely, secret existence to an end.

Side note: One of the first, if not the first, review that l wrote, was of a 'Sonic the Hedgehog' video game. I typed it out on an actual paper-fed typewriter, with ink and ribbon, in typing class, in secondary school. I was 15 years old, and it was 1996. l'd been inspired by the TV series 'Video Power' (1990-1992), in which the adventures of a group of animated characters drawn from video games, accompanied a segment in which a boy called Johnny Arcade rated various console video games.

 

 

That scene in the biker bar, when commotion breaks out and everyone's fighting, and Sonic moves to get his new pal Tom Wachowski (aka Doughnut Lord) (James Marsden) out of danger, and he runs so fast that everything has to be in slow motion, so we see what Sonic and the bar patrons are doing... it felt derivative; an almost exact imitation of the prison escape scene from 'X-Men: Days of Future Past' (2014), in which the ultra fast Quicksilver gets Charles, Erik and Logan, out of a sticky situation. Maybe it was well-meaning homage and not lazy imitation, I don't know.

 

Sonic's archnemesis Dr. Robotnik, played here by the svelte Jim Carrey, is obese in the animated TV series, and in the video games. Is it a move towards political correctness, to not make Robotnik overweight, here? I wonder.

Could the pairing of James Marsden and (the stunner) Tika Sumpter, as the Wachowskis, Tom and Maddie, respectively, be the result of an attempt at 'diverse casting'? I wonder.

It's interesting that Neal McDonough, who appears briefly in this movie, in a rather humorous scene, as a military official (Major Bennington), played the uber villain M. Bison, in 'Streetfighter: The Legend of Chun-Li' (2009), which draws from a legendary video game series from CAPCOM, yet 'Sonic' draws from video games by SEGA, a rival game publisher.

That scene towards the end, when a seemingly dead Sonic is resuscitated when Tom calls him 'friend', and returns infinitely more energetic than before, shooting Thor-like bolts from his body, and does his classic, whirling bad-guy-bashing moves from the video games, is rather exciting.

I found the plot a little too simple and sugar-coated, granted l'm well out of the age bracket that the movie is aimed at. 😃

However, 'Sonic the Hedgehog' is a somewhat clever little homage to friendship.

Postscript: 

There used to be a computer shop called Hi-Tech or Hi-Tec, in the city centre of Bulawayo, that sold video games. 

In my early teens, I'd visit the shop, just to see what new stock they had. Sometimes I'd walk past and there'd be a video game playing on one of the TV/computer screens and I'd look longingly, through the window, wishing I had a video game console.

I especially remember seeing 'Sonic the Hedgehog' gameplay, through the window, and being in awe. We never got 'Sonic' or a SEGA console. But we did eventually get one of those cheap, knock-off-ish consoles that came with a bunch of games on a single cartridge. 

It wasn't SEGA or Nintendo, but it was better than nothing. 😃