Sonic the Hedgehog has always been a star. When introduced in the early 1990s, the fuzzy blue speedball was the mascot and lead character for Sega’s home video game console, a potent rival to Nintendo’s plumber Mario, who originated in arcade games. Mario got a still-risible start in movies back in 1993, in “Super Mario Bros.,” a live-action picture starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo that has since developed a cult following. He bounced back in 2023 with an animated adventure replete with eye-popping graphics but lacking a certain “it’s-a me” charm.
In contrast, the hedgehog’s transition to the cinema screen has been smooth speed-of-light sailing, at least in terms of his commercial appeal. The first picture knocked Marvel off the top of the highest-grossing superhero movies, because Sonic is, sure, a superhero. The second one broke some of the records reset by the first. And so we have the inevitable third, again a mix of live-action and animation, again featuring Jim Carrey in the role of Ivo Robotnik, Sonic’s human nemesis, again featuring James Marsden and Tika Sumpter as friendly Montanans. Their job is to keep Sonic (voiced with try-hard amiability by Ben Schwartz) and his pals Knuckles (red and surly, but in a cute way, voiced by Idris Elba) and Tails (yellow and just plain cute, voiced by Colleen O’Shaughnessey) comfortable when they’re not off on save-the-planet adventures.
“Sonic the Hedgehog 3,” directed by Jeff Fowler, begins not with Sonic but with Shadow, who’s kind of like the older brother Sonic never knew he had. Shadow is bigger, has more color, wears the hedgehog life rings (a feature of the video game — just go with it) around his ankles and wrists, and has a poor attitude that gets worse when he remembers his more cheerful past, centered around a lively young girl named Maria. Shadow is voiced by Keanu Reeves with suitable emo brooding.
Unleashed on the world after 50 years in “stasis,” Shadow wreaks plenty of havoc in Tokyo. The agents of the “Guardian Units of Nations,” a.k.a. GUN, led in part by Director Rockwell (a frozen-faced Krysten Ritter), can’t counter him. Sonic and his pals can’t fathom him.
The narrative is powered by doppelgängers (bet you never thought you’d read that in a review of a Sonic the Hedgehog movie). While Sonic puzzles out Shadow, Carrey’s Robotnik discovers a never-even-intuited (as opposed to long-lost) grandfather. Get ready for the sight of two Jim Carreys engaging in sanctioned buffoonery.
It’s hard to settle on what’s more bombastic: Carrey’s admittedly virtuoso double act, or the teeming computer graphics gadgetry of death and destruction spilling out of every corner of the screen. However you choose to categorize this movie, you have to admit it’s a lot — up to and including a post-credits tease for the next picture in the franchise.
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