On February 14th, 2020 the first live action Sonic movie released. This was after a somewhat short delay despite Sonic’s design being completely changed after the original marketing materials came out. This article will give the impressions of someone who has played a lot of Sonic games.
Obviously the main draw of this movie is that it features Sonic, though it probably could have been made with a completely different character to similar effect. None of the references to the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise have any bearing on the plot of the movie. The movie actually has a surprisingly small amount of Sonic references, with just about as many or more completely unrelated references. Still, there are multiple references that should be very pleasing to Sonic and Sega fans in general in the movie.
The acting is generally all well done. Nothing in particular stands out as especially weird or awkward. Jim Carry plays the Eggman role very well, probably making the best interpretation of the character so far. Ben Schwartz voice acts Sonic so well he should probably be Sonic’s voice actor in the games from now on (unless they want to bring back Ryan Drummond). The other actors are all fine but don’t stand out or don’t play as important roles. None of them detract from the movie, though.
The visuals in this movie are pretty good overall. Sonic looks pretty good all things considered. There are a few moments where Sonic just being CGI overlaid on the screen is extremely obvious but the majority of the time this is hidden very well. The most high budget scenes are really awesome to watch but their placement is kinda questionable (one being in a place that has literally zero bearing on the plot by the end of the movie).
The plot of the movie is not particularly special. The protagonists are somewhat well developed. There is some strange plot moments that feel very tacked on but they don’t hurt the movie too much. The movie is much more about the journey than the destination. This is partly because of the obvious sequel that this movie sets up, pretty much killing any chance of a satisfying conclusion, not that one is even necessarily needed.
Overall the author of this article recommends Sonic the Hedgehog. It is engaging and surprisingly funny pretty much the entire time. This was probably managed in part by being very short, but it is hard to hold that against the movie as they pretty much went everywhere you possibly could in the first part of this series. The reviewer especially recommends the movie to Sonic and even general Sega fans for obvious reasons.
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