Thinking about it carefully, perhaps we should consider whether a film about Sega’s famous anthropomorphic blue hedgehog, created by Naoto Oshima and Yuji Naka in 1991 to compete with Nintendo’s Italian plumber, can be seen as a work that exceeds the simplest entertainment. It is not intuited too likely; neither was the first adaptation to the big screen (2020) and neither is its sequel now, Sonic 2directed by Jeff Fowler himself (2022).
In truth, we should only want interesting products if they translate video games with a really dramatic story into the cinema; as is the case with The Last of Usthe series by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann (since 2023) on HBO Max from the adventure to gamers by NaughtyDog. And, as the film court is, let’s give ourselves a hard time if a decent proposal is achieved throughout Unchartedthe latest contribution by Ruben Fleischer (2022) to this class of features.
In fact, if we could only tolerate the other film because of Jim Carrey’s Doctor Ivo Robotnik, the truth is that Sonic 2 try to take advantage of the actor’s participation and his irrepressible histrionics from the beginning. But the initial sequence, curious at least because of its ingredients, is followed by a few nonsense and implausibilities during staging of action that is intended to be glorious and does not even come close to it or of daily pranks.
‘Sonic 2’: a more colossal adventure but just as mediocre
It seems, however, that Jeff Fowler and his writers, repeaters Patrick Casey and Worm Miller and newcomer John Whittington, have decided to give us some more spectacular sequences than those of the original length, with more exotic and profuse scenarios in its elements and a higher level of destruction. But without the slow-motion boasts we knew from The X-Files (From 1993), X-Men: Days of Future Past or League of Justice.
Your desire to go towards something bigger and more spectacular on Sonic 2 It fixes one of the drawbacks that the 2020 story suffers from: its lack of narrative ambition. But be careful, because not quite. That it is decided to diversify where the hedgehog’s escapades take place with the voice of Ben Schwartz and to offer colossal circumstances does not mean, we fear, that the background of the story, the level of humor they use and even their emotional depth are rather jerking around.
It may be that some very specific joke makes us laugh out loud with its referentiality, but it is not repeated. As far as its biggest ballast is concerned, that of the essence of the products to consume like someone who gobbles up a fast food menu and forgets most of its images and pirouettes in a short time, it has not changed in the slightest. Jeff Fowler and company have wanted to resize the cinematographic function, but his mediocre heart continues to beat unabashedly.
The excess that leaves behind nonsense
It must be confessed, however, that the crooked-mouthed fear that nonsense is the tonic in Sonic 2 and it falls flat on our faces, when the other one is at least barely holding on, it’s totally real at first. But Patrick Casey and Worm Miller, with nothing noteworthy on their resume before the Sega speedster, and John Whittington, for whom we found the scripts for The LEGO Ninjago Movie and of batman: the lego movie (2020) to his credit, they have overlapped.
Thus, as the adventures of the alien protagonist with the new and grateful characters advance and enter the territory of physical excess, dignity manages to settle and we end up forgetting the feeling of imminent collapse. Which is no small thing for the manifest excess in the behavior of Natasha Rothwell’s Rachel, who we forgive like Jim Carrey and his doctor Ivo Robotnik. And, between the Kaffir and the Surrealists, Sonic 2 stands.