It’s a Bank Holiday Monday. I’d just dragged myself out of bed after a late night knowing I didn’t have to be up early in the morning. So while I munched my breakfast and drank my coffee, I figured what the heck, I’d give this VERY silly movie a go!!!
And you know what? It’s a charming movie!!! There’s not much that I ask out of a movie, a decent, compelling plotline, some good action and excitement (where it’s relevant), some emotion and some stakes. This movie had all of that in spades!
It’s fundamentally a buddy picture centring around mid-town America cop Tom, played by James Marsden, and Sonic, voiced by Ben Shwartz. Sonic has had to escape his home and his adoptive, owl mother to Earth where he’s been living in hiding, living vicariously through Tom. An incident where Sonic gets upset leads to him discharging an enormous EMP that gets the attention of the Govt who call in Dr Robotnik. Jim Carrey was born to play this role. I’m not a huge fan of his “whacky”. Of course it was wonderful when he first burst onto the scene with movies like Ace Ventura and The Mask but it’s somewhat worn thin. His acting chops are well proven with movies such as The Truman Show, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Man on the Moon. This was a movie where the whacky worked. He was gloriously OTT in this super-villain mad-man guise.
So follows then the great chase to San Francisco where Sonic needs to retrieve his magical, golden rings so he can escape to the ‘mushroom world’ where he’ll no longer bring any danger to his friends whilst Robotnik hunts him down.
Yes, absolutely, there are plot-holes aplenty, especially given it was the Govt who called in Robotnik and then, at the end, seem to forget that fact. But it doesn’t stop this being an enormously enjoyable flick. The mid-credit scenes set up a potential sequel nicely and I, for one, will be there for it. Sure, I think I’ll probably be waiting for a home release rather than visiting the cinema for it, but I’ll certainly be happy to check it out when it finally arrives.
