Sonic the Hedgehog 2
Year: 2022
Rating: PG
Length: 122 minutes / 2.03 hours
It’s amazing to me that the original Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) movie pulled out a passable film despite decades of sub-par video game movie adaptations. While it didn’t dive into much of the lore other than the conflict between Sonic (Ben Schwartz) and Doctor Robotnik (Jim Carrey), it set the stage for something better in its sequel, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022). With nostalgia being a huge factor in this franchise, it pleasantly surprised me that this film knew which moments would achieve that intended effect.
At first, I was worried that Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was lumping too much new material together with the introduction of both Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey) and Knuckles (Idris Elba). Still, the combo—along with Robotnik’s traditional video game look—really gave the impression that this movie cared about its source material. The huge action set pieces were the highlights of this film and I was grinning from ear to ear at the excitement of seeing such scenes play out that had (until then) been merely 16-bit representations on a video game screen. Again, the feel of the games shone through in this sequel.
That’s not to say that Sonic the Hedgehog 2 doesn’t have any weaknesses. As a carry-over from the first movie, there is a lot of human drama that’s mostly played for laughs against the “fish out of water” Sonic. I honestly think they could have easily cut 30 minutes of run-time by excluding the Hawaii marriage, which would have made a much tighter and more action-packed movie. After all, I didn’t come to see a Sonic movie expecting the slapstick humor of the humans to be the pinnacle of its comedy. Even with these weaker sections, this sequel was quite the improvement over the original.
A movie loyal to the feel of the video games but with some unnecessary humor mixed in, I give Sonic the Hedgehog 2 3.5 stars out of 5.
1/2
