Review: ‘Sonic the Hedgehog 3′ drowns its predecessors’ merits in a dark ocean of anti-imagination

Of all the critters and characters that populate the pop culture sphere, none have taken a journey quite like Sonic the Hedgehog. The blue blur was once a legitimate competitor to Super Mario himself back in the heyday of the console wars, but after modern gaming did him dirty with a string of mediocre-to-offensively bad titles, Sonic came to rely on internet brain rot and the occasional animated series for relevance.

With Sonic the Hedgehog 3, the motion-happy mammal has found himself in an unfortunate case of déjà vu, because after a relatively strong first two films in this franchise, this third entry has taken a nosedive not dissimilar to his decline in the late aughts. Jim Carrey, of course, offers enough signs of life to prevent a total power failure, and yet, he perhaps also serves as Exhibit A for how not to handle these characters on the big screen, a failure that’s made extra bitter by how steadily they’ve been handled up until now.

The film stars Ben Schwartz as the voice of Sonic, who’s celebrating the anniversary of his arrival on Earth with his adoptive human parents Tom and Maddie (James Marsden and Tika Sumpter), as well as his best friends and world-saving teammates Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey) and Knuckles (Idris Elba). But when a brand new threat emerges in the form of the severely overpowered and equally angsty Shadow the Hedgehog (Keanu Reeves), Sonic and friends must form an unlikely alliance with Dr. Ivo Robotnik (Jim Carrey) to prevent the destruction of Earth.

Let’s be frank for a moment. No one is walking into this movie expecting any sort of heavy character drama or emotional takeaways more sizeable than you would find in a fortune cookie, and the Sonic films are in a unique position where aiming for such a target would be detrimental to the best versions of these films. Culturally speaking, Sonic is engrained in the zeitgeist through fan fiction as much as his games at this point, cemented as a spunky, trash-talking, swaggering teenager surrounded by an ensemble of colorful characters. Moreover, the real-world setting of these movies allows Sonic to organically play with references the way that Tom Holland’s Spider-Man or a real teenager beginning to discover their interests might.

With all of this in mind, it’s clear that the best plan of attack here is highly stylized and youthfully emphasized character dynamics while playing Sonic as a sort of static, anime-protagonist type, where the story lies in how he changes the people around him rather than what he learns. All this, and you wouldn’t even need to sacrifice fan service.

But instead, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 haphazardly slaps together another “your past doesn’t define you, your choices do” emotional core for Sonic’s clash with Shadow, complete with same side-eye of duality that we already got when Sonic faced off against Knuckles in the last movie (Shadow is even manipulated like Knuckles was). It’s an approach that tries to play itself as serious, but is too shoddily written to be taken seriously, is downplayed by the film’s sense of humor at every turn, and isn’t even a worthwhile pursuit in the first place because of how moot it is in the context of Sonic’s character.

And really, that’s the problem across the board, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 doesn’t have a plan or an idea beyond “blockbuster with Sonic characters,” and so it ends up going through the tired motions of the moment (including exhausting meta humor, CGI swirls, and vague epiphanies that have little to do with anything that’s happening) until the film’s end.

What’s worse, so much time is spent on this completely unnecessary third arc for Sonic, that it takes away from any potential development of Tails, Knuckles, and even Shadow, all of whom spend far more time on the fringes than they ought to. Had they been utilized more fully, the film’s friendship beats would have landed much more smoothly, and Shadow could have even been played as an antihero protagonist of sorts. Instead, Sonic’s supporting cast doesn’t truly register as anything more than knobs for the set piece choreography, and in a Sonic film, that’s unacceptable, and entirely unsustainable if this franchise wants to spread its wings beyond 2027’s already-confirmed Sonic 4.

Then there’s the matter of Jim Carrey, who has consistently been the brightest spot in this franchise since it first landed nearly four years ago, and who, for that exact reason, suffers the most in the jump to Sonic 3. Carrey plays a dual role here, as his tried-and-true Eggman persona alongside Eggman’s grandfather, Dr. Gerald Robotnik, and there’s a scene in the movie where they say, in unison: “It’s almost like we’re two characters played by the same actor in a movie,” while looking at the camera.

Indeed, there’s no more efficient way to telegraph throwing in the towel than by vomiting up the most grotesquely insulting audience wink you can muster so as to try and distract from the lack of filmmaking competence on display (also among these infractions is a crack about hate-watching 2011’s Green Lantern).

And it only gets worse from there. The irreverence of Carrey’s Robotnik was always a boon because of his genuinely clever dialogue and the relatively complex gags that came from it, so why waste time on a slapstick grandson-grandfather bonding montage and a weird dance sequence in the middle of a G.U.N. base heist? You can stick anybody in a funny costume and make them do funny dance moves, so why even use Carrey here if you’re not taking full advantage of his ability to verbally sell razor-sharp eccentricity?

In fact, the dialogue for just about everyone is noticeably less vibrant, which is largely the result of the film making a point to talk to the audience rather than have the characters talk to each other and engage with the world around them. Sonic says things like “Everyone loves my catchphrase” while cracking jokes that sound like they came from an AI trained on Butch Hartman cartoons, a far cry from the charming, teenage stereotype-coded quips that made the character so popular in the first place, and which were even utilized relatively well in the first two films.

There’s no reason the Sonic films can’t course-correct from here, and with an endless supply of characters and material to still adapt (from the Sega Genesis games to the Nintendo Switch titles, all the way to the gonzo Archie Comics if they so dare), these movies will likely keep coming so long as ticket sales stay strong.

But Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is a confoundingly massive dip in quality from the surprisingly steady kickoff to this franchise, having traded in a decent interpretation of the source material’s personality for faithless, recycled proceedings that are offputtingly eager to please. And for God’s sake, retire the film-original human characters already.