Sonic The Hedgehog

1991. Green Hills Zone act 1. Sonic starts off slow, jumping up to grab a few rings floating above him and to avoid the big wheeled ladybird trundling towards him. Then a tree top springboard launches him into the sky for more rings and over the laser equipped blue bottle taking aim. A quick spin through the air later and he's on a bridge avoiding the piranhas jumping to bite him and the strange crabs chucking fireballs at him. A smooth leap into the sky sees him bounce atop a baddie and then zoom through the balloon save point which leads onto the ring filled loop the loop. Flying through that he lowers his head and assumes the roll position as he enters the long twisting tunnel. Seconds later he emerges and zips across the sky as the timer hits the minute mark. All there's left to do now is spring into the giant ring but in his haste he lands in a pit of spikes and loses everything. Feck. Back to the last save point. Does this ring a bell? If it does you might enjoy this film. Some bit anyway.

Sonic is a little blue alien hedgehog who's immensely fast. Like speed of sound fast. Because of this power he's constantly chased across the galaxy by others who want to study him and use his energy for nefarious means. He settles on Earth and starts to live life. But his lonely existence gets to him and his only contact with humans is from afar. Until the day he finds himself chased once again, this time by a government scientist named Doctor Robotnik and he has to ask for help, help in the form of the Doughnut Lord.

Yup.

Sonic the Hedgehog is aimed squarely at two camps. People in their late 30's - mid 40's who feel a major pang of nostalgia when they see the Sega logo and small children who go bananas for anything CGI. It's hard to see a film aimed at two such disparate groups working but it kinda does and Sega being the crafty feckers that they are have snared the family market for the next week at least. It's fun in places, it's silly, it's beginning and end are delightful recreations of the beloved game and it's depictions of Sonic and his enemy, Doctor Robotnik are perfect. It's just a pity everything in the middle is bland and dull and not remotely connected to anything in the games. You'll keep the kids in the audiences interested but it's here the nostalgia seeking generation x-er's will want to tap out.

What works works well though. Jim Carrey's Robotnik is a suitably demented creation and the very unexpected musical moment halfway through is a solid reminder of why he became so famous 25 years ago. Expect aghast stares from your kids throughout. Ben Schwartz's Sonic is fun too, exactly how you'd imagine him to be. All rapid fire chat and joyful exuberance and happily he stays just on the right side of annoying, unlike Schwartz's other famous creation, the unbearable Jean Ralphio from TV's Parks and Recreation. It's his quieter little moments that give some welcome respite from the speedy chaos onscreen, his happiness at some long needed human interaction, his first meeting with a fluffy Golden Labrador, the charming moment where he gets his famous red sneakers. Here asides on the importance of friendship and kindness abound. Sonic looks exactly like his video game counterpart too, with the look of the character thankfully changed back after the social media uproar when the first trailer came out. The days of Bob Hoskin's Super Mario are far in the past.

Everything else is beige though, beige as the Doughnut lord's uniform. The Doughnut lord is what Sonic calls Tom, the cop who's land he's been hiding on and who becomes his travel companion while on the run. James Marsden is a nice lead but he's saddled with such a sincere character that he's impossible to take seriously. Even the big bar fight set-piece that livens up the mid section is beige. If you've seen any of the latter day X-Men movies with Quicksilver you'll find it fierce familiar. With such an iconic lead creation and dozens of games to fall back on for ideas you'd think director Jeff Fowler and writer Josh Miller could have went in a more creative, exciting direction. For a film with such a big budget you'll be hard pressed to see where the money went. The fact that the opening scene and the final battle hark back to the games so much just deepens the frustration with the middle section.

Sonic The Hedgehog is fleeting fun but it could have been a lot better. In cinemas now.