122 min | PG | April 8, 2022 | Paramount Pictures
Sonic settles into small-town life until Dr. Robotnik crashes back to Earth with a new sidekick named Knuckles and a plan to grab a power source that could level the planet. The action is bigger and the jokes land more often. The movie just forgot to leave anything on the cutting room floor.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 picks up with the blue hedgehog living a quiet life in small-town Montana under the protection of Tom and Maddie Wachowski. Dr. Robotnik returns from his exile on the Mushroom Planet with a new ally and a hunger for the Master Emerald. The film is a chase for a magic stone that grants unlimited power. Underneath the video-game plot, the movie wants to be about found family and a kid sidekick learning he belongs. It never commits to that idea long enough to make it stick because it keeps stopping to service the franchise.
Jim Carrey plays Robotnik as pure unhinged vaudeville. He chews scenery with mustache flourishes and rapid-fire monologues and treats every scene like a stage he owns. Ben Schwartz voices Sonic with cocky teenage energy that lands the jokes and softens for the family beats. Idris Elba voices Knuckles as a humorless warrior who takes everything literally, and the deadpan delivery generates the film’s best laughs. Colleen O’Shaughnessey voices Tails with eager sincerity. James Marsden and Tika Sumpter get sidelined into a wedding subplot that drains the middle of the movie.
Jeff Fowler directs from a script by Pat Casey, Josh Miller, and John Whittington that crams in two villains, three artifacts, and a destination wedding. The action set pieces lift directly from the games and look the part. A snowboard chase down a mountain uses real momentum and clean spatial geography that lets you track Sonic across the slope. The problem is structural. The script keeps cutting away from the hedgehogs to a human subplot in Hawaii that has nothing to do with the main quest and stops the movie cold.
This is a film built by addition. Every scene answers the question of what to put in rather than what the story needs. The faithful action and Carrey’s commitment keep it watchable. The bloat keeps it from being good. It is a sequel that mistakes more for better and never finds a reason to exist beyond setting up the next one.