No digital makeover (or smaller teeth) can fix everything wrong with Sonic The Hedgehog
Film Reviews Movie Review
His eyes are bigger, his fur is smoother, and thank god his teeth are no longer so disturbingly… human. Yes, the version of Sonic The Hedgehog zipping into theaters a few hours from now is much less unpleasant to look at than the one unveiled to widespread ridicule last year, when the first trailer for his first big-screen adventure dropped. Post- the redesign all but commissioned by Twitter, you might even call the little blue guy cute, in a plush-doll kind of way. Then he opens his mouth, and you maybe wish those ghastly teeth were still there, if only to distract from the lazy wisecracks, pop culture references, and earnest clichés that come flooding out. Sonic’s first line of dialogue? “I know what you’re thinking,” uttered in voice-over and slathered on top of a freeze frame of the climax. Yes, it’s that kind of movie: a nattering chore of a “family” comedy that feels written by committee and directed by indifferent machine.
They’ve made over Sonic’s personality, too, in so much as the rodent in the running shoes ever had one. He certainly had plenty of sass, conveyed through the start-screen wag of a finger. Born at the height of the 16-bit console wars, Sega’s answer to Mario was basically an emblem of kid-courting ’90s attitude: cool but rude like Raphael of the Ninja Turtles, an irreverent trouble-maker with spiky hair like Bart Simpson, an animal mascot with a need for X Games speed. That’s not really the vibe of this big-screen Sonic. As voiced by Ben Schwartz, who played Jean-Ralphio on Parks And Recreation, he’s more of a plucky dreamer who just wants to make some friends. That’s not so easy for the guy though—in part because he’s as annoyingly hyperactive as a kid who’s just wolfed down three bowls of sugary cereal. Oh, and there’s also the fact that this version of Sonic is from outer space and hence has to lay low, lest someone try to capture him and harness his super speed.
After a childhood spent darting around the galaxy, Sonic has made a home in the quaint town of Green Hills, Montana. You’d think such a poky place would be torture for someone who can move faster than the speed of sound. But no, Sonic loves Green Hills so much that he’s basically a one-man (one-hog?) tourism board. Really, the whole movie plays like propaganda for the virtues of small-town life. Sharing protagonist duties with this digitally rendered cheerleader is Officer Tom Wachowski (James Marsden), a local cop whose only character flaw is that he’s considering (gasp!) moving to San Francisco, where he might get to solve some real crimes instead of pulling cats out of trees. There’s also the bad guy, haughty scientist and drone commander Dr. Robotnik, played by Jim Carrey with a mustache only slightly less outrageous than the one the character sports in the games. Robotnik considers himself superior to everyone, but he’s especially condescending to the honest, simple folk of Green Hills. “Real Americans,” consider yourself relentlessly pandered to.
It’s an electrical disturbance caused by our hero’s velocity that puts him on the radar of the U.S. military. Following a series of plot complications not worth recounting, Sonic guilt-trips Officer Wachowski into a road trip to San Fran, Robotnik and his gadgets in hot pursuit. Why does someone who can cross the whole country on foot in maybe a matter of minutes need a ride? Well, he doesn’t know where he’s going, the script by Patrick Casey and Josh Miller half-assedly rationalizes. Though Marsden has chauffeured an obnoxious CGI animal companion before (see: Hop—or actually, don’t), he has almost zero chemistry with this talking special effect. That could be because Sonic, theoretically sympathetic for his alien-orphan backstory, is actually kind of a selfish prick—when not starting bar fights just for the experience, he’s getting all judgmental about his new companion’s career aspirations. At best, Tom seems to begrudgingly tolerate the hedgehog, which might be more than plenty of parents in the audience can manage. (For genuine albeit unintentional laughs, they’ll have to settle for some blatant product placement, including a Zillow plug notable for realistically estimating Bay Area rental rates.)
You could call Sonic The Hedgehog a wannabe E.T., except that might require imagining a version of Steven Spielberg’s classic where the extraterrestrial flosses, makes bad Uber jokes, and lectures Elliot about not appreciating what he already has. The film rises not even above the low bar of your average video game adaptation: Last summer’s Detective Pikachu was lousy, too, but it at least offered some gimcrack spectacle in the spirit of its source material. By contrast, this creatively bankrupt project divorces its title character from both the speed and tropical eye-candy, loop-de-loop backdrops of the Sonic games, dropping him instead into drab roadhouses, suburban kitchens, and the passenger seat of a car chugging down a nondescript highway. Even the scant bursts of action are unremarkable; the best director Jeff Fowler can offer is a weak knockoff of the “Time In A Bottle” sequence from X-Men: Days Of Future Past. Only Carrey, half-committing to some recycled uptight-madman shtick, ever threatens to rocket Sonic The Hedgehog out of its pedestrian kid-flick junkyard. You almost want to root for Robotnik, in an enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend kind of way. Which is to say, if the bad guy wins, the good guy shuts up.
423 Comments
I think everyone expected that this movie was going to be fundamentally broken at its core but it’s still a bit disheartening to see after they took the character design criticism to heart
They could change sonic’s horrifying face, but the real horror was inside the movie all along!Let that be a lesson to you, kids! You can have all the expensive cosmetic surgery in the world and STILL be awful to be around.
The real horrors were the horrors we made along the way.
Exhibit A:
“they took the character design criticism to heart”
Did they though? They made a decision, which I’ll warrant will pay off, to fix the surface details of a crappy film thus giving it unearned cultural cache and warm-feeling from fans who feel listened to. Seems like a fairly mercantile decision that would not have been made if executives didn’t think it would help the box-office.
They 100% did it because they thought it would help box office. I’d bet that in a film like this not a single decision was made without having box office figures in mind.
The narrative around this film is still amazing to me. Given two choices: 1. The movie was way behind schedule, the trailer dropped with unfinished effects, and the producers managed to save face for the delayed released by pretending it was their choice. 2. The movie was almost done, the trailer dropped with near-completed effects, and the producers were so moved by the online response that they changed the release calendar, redesigned the movie’s main character, and re-rendered every scene with Sonic in it (ie, the whole movie).People seriously think Choice 2 is the most likely one?
Your choice 1 is dumb. Sonic’s horrible original design wasn’t an “unfinished effect” it was a completely different art style. They were CLEARLY going for something different, something that it turned out precisely zero people appreciated, except perhaps as something to make a scene or a comedy routine about.
All the other reviews I’ve read/watched have enjoyed the movie. From what I’ve gathered, it’s not quite as high mark as Detective Pikachu, but it’s not that far off. It’s a simple, wacky kids film.Why the fuck they sent Dowd of all people to review this is a headscratcher.
He knows what he did.
Dude listen to the description of the opening scene ffs…
Eh, AV Club is geared towards a certain type of pop culture customer. If this movie is trying to entertain through lazy pop culture references then everyone here who likes movies knows exactly what kind of film it is.
There’s no shortage of genuinely good kids’ films though; why should a mediocre one get a pass?
I feel like we need to update the old saying: Complaining never solved anything, except for that one time with the Sonic the Hedgehog movie.
Took the character design criticism to heart, or weaponised their most blatant fuck up into an evil genius-level “well, we have to support it now, even though we would have had no interest if it looked like this all along” PR boost?
Given what happened to the animation studio in question as a result of them taking that criticism to heart, I’m not sure how much I’d want to count that as a plus for this movie.
How is Ryan Reynolds not involved in this?
It’s funny, as one could tell from the trailer, the redesign fans demanded won’t make this an even passably mediocre film. When can we start leveraging twitter vitriol to re-write scripts.
*remembers the reactions to Star Wars and Justice LeagueY’know, scratch that, let’s just not…
Paid, union, professional readers whose *job* is to provide rewrite notes for studios are routinely ignored.I don’t ever EVER want to see a day when studios crowdsource story development. That said, I don’t think I ever will. Because none of them fucking listen anyway.
I really want to give James Marsden a big hug, because with the exception of Westworld, he’s made some truly baffling career decisions for an actor who’s always so likeable. Even his smart choices like X-men and Westworld are off-set by him happily signing up for the most boring roles possible. (His Westworld character literally has no personality, which is something Anthony Hopkins’ character even casually points out).His 30 rock role is essentially the only major role I can think of where he was amazing and he got great material.
I’d love to have seen him get a last crack at a Cyclops-centric film, since he was good in the role, and the character, when not in Logan’s shadow, has some interesting facets.
He’s the only version of Cyclops that didn’t suck ass and they did him dirty in The Last Stand. Okay, they did everyone dirty in The Last Stand, but still.
He did them dirty by choosing to go off to play Louis lane’s new boyfriend in Bryan Singers creepy Superman instead of playing cyclops
keep your eye open
He’s so great in Enchanted.
I looove Enchanted.
Amy Adams was robbed of an Oscar for that role that year. She even sang the goddamn song on the show, and looked stunning while doing it.
Wow she did great , what an effort for a non-singer! She continues to impress.
As a card-carrying member of the “Enchanted” Defense Force, I appreciate your and Yummish’s comments!
I forgot about that. Yes, as movie roles that’s easily his greatest role.
Fuck I was gonna mention Enchanted. He was very charming.
iswydt
It’s a smaller role in a huge ensemble, but he was lots of fun in Death At A Funeral (the Chris Rock remake).
He literally signed on for Hop 2.0I mean, come on, he had to have read the script and seen he spends forever talking in his car to a CGI character. How could he not see this?The only person he has to blame here is himself (and his agent).
I would be curious to know if he signed on purely for easy money or if he thought it might be a good film? I don’t blame him for making something like The Box, since the idea of working with the Donnie Darko director probably sounded good on paper.
The trouble is that by that point you’d also have to include “and also the director of Southland Tales”.
We can cut him some slack there, because I think The Box was in production before Southland Tales. Those two movies combined completely killed Richard Kelly. (I rewatched The Box recently and Marsden is pretty good in a bafflingly made nonsense story that goes nowhere).
I know that I’m a monster because I liked both movies.
Southland Tales feels like it spent decades in production, so it’s not only possible but likely – the random shifts of focus, the characters that are brought up and then completely forgotten about later, it all contributes to a feeling you’re watching someone adapt to the whims of what they’ve been watching and liking over the course of years.“Hey, I just found this awesome CD! I think the lyrics really means something – quick, gimme the script!” “I just saw this amazing tracking shot. I wanna do one!” “WOW! Have you seen Repo Man?”
hot take: I’m a fan of THE BOX. It is genuinely bonkers and has some killer scenes, plus Langella being Langella and Diaz doing some real acting.
As an audience member I enjoyed the box for all it’s baffling insanity and sheer determination to drive off a cliff and explode in a fiery wreckage in the third act.
As an agent, I’d advise my clients to stay far away from it.
Dude must have a lot of bills.
The only person he has to blame here is himself (and his agent).He’s obviously a few letters below A-lister, so he can’t just get the pick of the litter. To keep getting those paychecks, you gotta take what’s available. Even Michael Caine stooped to doing movies like Jaws : The Revenge just for the money.
Don’t know if this is real, but the spirit is true.
In a Rolling Stone interview back in the 80s, Caine was asked about movies like Jaws 4 and Blame it on Rio, and he said ‘I pick the best script available when I need one’ (which at the time was 3-4 movies a year for him). He was ALL about the money for a good decade or so. (I can’t blame him, or Jeremy Irons for that matter, because British movies paid a heckuva lot less to their actors.)
Yeah but he’s still solid B and surely there are better projects available to him. He needs to quit grabbing easy money in roles like this and use his easy charisma in something unexpected. A few more of these and the only interesting casting he’ll get will be for the irony.
James likes to work, that’s for sure.
low effort, no stunts, easy paycheck.
On the other hand, perhaps he’s taking a page from the Michael Caine playbook? “Okay, I have to be in Jaws 4: The Revenge, but I am being well paid to hang out on the beaches of the Bahamas for six weeks.”
MICHAEL CAINE, who is an Oscar winner once said of his role in Jaws: The Revenge (1987) that “I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/actors/great-quotes-about-acting-the-oscars-and-how-to-audition/michael-caine/
A paycheck is still a paycheck.
Well, he’s obviously in it for the money, and as boring as his career choices have been, you can’t deny they’re paying off for him. Do I wish he’d get more exciting roles? Sure, he’s a talented guy. Do I feel sorry for him? Hell no, he’s got a high paying, extremely easy job.
I’m pretty sure they’re banking on the international market for these duds. If it bombs critically he’ll still be thanking his agent, as they stand to make a few buckets of cash off kids around the world dragging their parents to this branded dumpster fire.
I feel a little bit bad about this (perhaps because of that “likability” mojo), but I’ve never actually liked him in anything until Westworld. He was never bad, just there was something sort of bro-ish and vacant about his mien which never was covered by a part.And then, bam, he plays a host in Westworld, I I thought, “Damn, perfect casting.” And he really knocked it out of the park. Poor Teddy.
I’m with you. He plays a good arsehole in Dead to Me. And in 2 Guns.
Sorry, he plays an arsehole well. Just to be clear.
Marsden is also terrific in Dead Like Me, in a role that plays with his charming likability in an excellent way.
I met him once in a bar I was the door guy of at the time, and he was so super nice! Dude was having a Budweiser and smoking a Parliament, all-around pleasant.
He was excellent in the Netflix series Dead to Me. He absolutely nailed the “likable douche bag” character. In lesser hands that role would have been a one-note annoyance but with Marsden you could totally understand why Linda Cardellini’s character would keep falling for his bullshit.
He’s handsome and talented and underutilized, for sure. I have a theory: he got cast as a cuckold one too many times early in his movie career. Think about it: The Notebook, X-Men, Superman Returns, Enchanted–same character in each one, basically. I think there’s only so many times you can play Handsome Boyfriend Who Gets Cheated On before Hollywood discards your leading man potential.
And to think he left the X-Men franchise to follow Bryan Singer (ugh) to be the bland “Baxter” in Superman Returns. For this he gets a shit send-off in X-Men: The Last Stand. though everything was shit in The Last Stand, so maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on Marsden for dumping that franchise.
He was very charismatic in the little seen 2012 film Bachelorette.
He was in the first season of Dead To Me, which is very good. Umm… I don’t think he’s gonna be in season 2.
He stole scenes in Hairspray.
He really does have charisma to spare. Imagine how much better his career would be with Paul Rudd’s agent.
Just seems like a good guy, too (a la Rudd). Maybe some time in the indie wilderness would do him good.
Um, are you forgetting ENCHANTED?(He was also pretty good in Hairspray too. Dude has mad singing chops.)
I agree with this 100 percent. He’s handsome, likable and he could have been such a great superhero if given better writing. Maybe he can still get an MCU role?
He’s pretty fun in the Netflix show “Dead To Me”
Looks it up, yes he was in goddamn Hop as well, I bet there are more stinkers, but am to lazy to care.
You mean as far as trying to top Sean Bean as making losing/dying into an art form and acting career?
I think he’s very charming, but I think the real problem is that… maybe… he’s not that great of an actor. IMHO.
As soon as I saw his picture in the headline, I thought “Uh oh, this is gonna be bad.” Not because he’s bad, but he has become a barometer of a thing that isn’t going to be good.
Maybe he doesn’t care? Maybe he just wants to have fun and cash big checks?
Not all actors want to be Meryl Streep. Some just want to make money.
But who knows, I’m not James Marsden.
I would assume he’s well aware of the quality of the movies he signs up for.
Everyone knew since day 1 that Sonic would be a shit show, I would find it hard to believe he was out of the loop.
I was wondering what trickster god he made a bargain with. He seems to consistently get work, but it’s just always off.
yep he was like Ray Stevenson in Punisher:WarZone, note perfect character portrayal.
Yes. We bought a dvd called “Into the Grizzly Maze” from the 5$ bin two years ago, starring Marsden and a very over the top Billy Bob Thornton vs. a big-ass bear. It was execrable, and he was great in it.
Into the Grizzly Maze is on Sony Movie Channel every so often and I just love watching it.
I mean, his Westworld character is written that way on purpose, nothing about that decision is bad and the material is good. You can’t blame an intentionally whitebread character for being whitebread.
Check out Interstate 60 for a good Marsden movie. It’s written and directed by Bob Gale (who wrote Back to the Future), and it’s basically a road movie—it’s hard to describe, though. It’s weird and not for everyone, but the cast includes Gary Oldman, Kurt Russell, Amy Smart, and Ann-Margret as people he meets along the way.
Or in Superman Returns, playing “Boyfriend Who Isn’t Superman.”
To the movie’s credit, they made him a legitimately good guy, and not one of those stock “Haw haw, I stole your girlfriend!” guys.
There have been so many Hollywood careers that were torpedoed by poor judgment. To have a great career there, you need three things: 1) talent, 2) luck, and 3) the ability to read a first-draft script and accurately forecast how good it might be when they actually get down to shooting. It’s not easy.
Holy shit, he’s almost 50. He might be out-Paul Rudding Paul Rudd.
So many actors are like Marsden, you got to have somebody giving good vision on the projects (director, producers) to get good performances! Poehler and gang that made 30 Rock is a good example, she utilizes everyone on that show so well.
I’ve always found the idea of actors and directors finding each other and forming creatively beneficial partnerships. Like Scorsese and DeNiro or Burton and Depp or even Wes Anderson and his gang of actors. Because then you get talented actors who never found their right director at key career moments. Like how Brendan Fraser is fantastic, but he wasted too much time with The Mummy director. Or how Marsden would benefit from filmmakers who really know how to get Enchanted level work out of him on a regular basis.
Robot and Frank? Dead to Me? This looks like a dud, but he’s had some good chances too.
I thought he was quite charming in 27 Dresses.
I’m gonna see if the other reviews are this bad before I make my decision; Dowd hates a lot of things. As noted above, he hated Detective Pikachu for some irrational reason.I also have a nitpick with this statement: “After a childhood spent darting around the galaxy, Sonic has made a home
in the quaint town of Green Hills, Montana. You’d think such a poky
place would be torture for someone who can move faster than the speed of
sound.” No, Sonic prefers open spaces and long, long stretches of road for one obvious reason. Green Hill Zone is basically the same thing as this.
We know from the games that Sonic has had….mixed results with cities. Too cramped, not enough room to run. The best appearance of one was in Sonic Adventure 2, which resembled San Francisco, so that explains the movie’s choice.
I really liked detective Pikachu, but if you aren’t a past or current Pokemon cult member, that movie is basically endless white noise. This seems a bit easier to classify as good or awful, since it barely resembles any sonic product.
To be fair, I missed the Pokemon revolution in gaming. When the first game and the cards gained popularity, I was already in my teen years and felt it was aimed at a younger crowd. I played one of the games a few years ago to see what it was all about, but never finished it that I can recall.And yet, I actually enjoyed Detective Pikachu. It was fun enough without having more than a passing knowledge about Pokemon. It wasn’t an amazing must-see movie, and I can see what you mean. But I don’t necessarily think that its enjoyment hinged solely on familiarity with the franchise.
I really wanted Detective Pikachu to be the next Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and all the pieces were there. But after three rowdy drunk teenagers left the theater 20 minutes in, yelling to everyone “Yo this movie fuckin’ SUCKS,” the worst part was that they were right. The rowdy teens were RIGHT
I expected Saturday afternoon on HBO level of entertainment and was satisfied.Perhaps your expectations were way too high.
I had a similar experience with Spiderman 3, only with drunk college students.
“I really wanted Detective Pikachu to be the next Who Framed Roger Rabbit”Those movies back then were made for adults and marketed to kids. Like half the content in that you couldn’t make today, parents would riot.
I know next to nothing about Pokemon and I enjoyed it. But I liked the absent dad redemption movies of the 80s.
As a dad with a daughter who both love Pokemon we both left Detective Pikachu fairly unsatisfied, it was a little too slow, plodding and dark for her, kind of a dull story that lacked punch for me. I did leave it though thinking “if you’re some 20-30 year old Pokemon fan this is probably the perfect movie for you” which anecdotally was confirmed when my cousins who are in that age bracket came back gushing about the movie. Even the general story of “finding yourself as a new adult” seemed to be aimed at that demo.
I’ve never played any of the games and I’ve never watched any animated series… but man I love my fantasy films and so I saw it and I actually really loved it. I thought it was really well produced, directed, acted, cast, effects, etc… everything. And it had a beautifully created living world full of Pokemon and humans. I actually plan on picking it up on Blu-ray I thought it was so good. /just_sayin’
I’ve never played or watched Pokemon, my only interaction with it is being through memes on reddit. Yet, I enjoyed the movie and thought it was worth the $4.99 rental. Some bits may have been lost on me, but it was still fun, if not a bit sappy and predictable.
Wut?
My kids liked it so I liked it
I’ve never played a Pokemon game, nor seen the anime, nor dealt with its trading cards. In fact, I grew up with Digimon and didn’t even realize P0kemon existed until like high school or something. And I still found Detective Pikachu good enough to be a B range movie. It obviously wasn’t high cinema, but it also wasn’t a trashy flick. If was pretty decent.
Mania and Generations aside, you can say that for most Sonic releases of the past decade.
Oddly enough, I have NEVER played Pokemon in my life (card game, video game, phone game, or otherwise) and know nothing about the characters, but I went to see “Detective Pikachu” with my boyfriend (who has and does) and I ended up really enjoying it.Yeah, it wasn’t world-changing cinema or anything, but I got a vibe of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” mashed together with “His Dark Materials.” And I found that having the merest passing cultural awareness of Pokemon was enough for the movie to make sense.YMMV of course. 🙂
Detective Pikachu is not a great movie, but it’s a fucking fantastic Pokémon movie.
I still enjoyed despite not being a Pokemon fan boy.
I liked the film even though all my Pokemon knowledge comes from memes and references. I was too old for cartoons and games when they came out but the film was cute and funny if tad predictable.
Most of the video reviews I’ve seen (which are mostly from gaming-focused channels) have liked it. Consensus seems to be that it’s a decently fun way to spend 90 minutes, but not All-Time Greatest Kids Movie Ever.
I was trying to do a quick search to see what Marsden was paid to be in this, and a bunch of links to seemingly positive reviews came up. I can see why this would decidedly NOT be Dowd’s cup of tea, but graded on the appropriate curve people don’t seem to hate it.
Detective Pikachu was bad, and I have the disappointing feeling I’m going to side with dowd on this one too. The moment of detective pikachu that actually felt pokemon specific was when they were trying to get information from Mr. Mime. Every other aspect of the film was by the numbers, insert your IP here. And like he mentions in the review, this movie has removed everything distinct about the sonic games and put him in a roadtrip movie.
I don’t think hating it because it sucks is an irrational reason.
As someone who saw the film, I can say it is okay. It is both fun and surprisingly slow for a movie about a speedster.
Marsden is the weak link (besides the writing) as he really never establishes any chemistry with the high energy hedgehog (but he is fine in his other scenes). Carrey chews through every scene he is in and is a delight most of the time. It is obvious Carrey threw the script in the trash and having a blast. The supporting cast does a decent job. Sumpter felt under utilized.
Like many kids films, you have to suspend disbelief on some plot elements and just go with it. I would compare it more closely to the Live/CGI Alvin & the Chipmunks films than Detective Pikachu. If you could get through or even enjoyed the Alvin films then you’ll be able to tolerate/enjoy Sonic.The film sits at a solid C.
Detective Pikachu was good. It wasn’t groundbreaking, the plot beats were pretty by the numbers, but it also overcame a lot to be remotely watchable, and came out really fun and not at all creepy, and deserves credit for it. Im not expecting a full review within a review, but just saying it was lousy is a pretty weak opinion from a film critic. It reminds me of a friend who calls anything that has flaws or doesn’t live up to his expectations for its entire runtime ‘shit’, whether its a 2 hour movie, 60 hour game or full franchise with entries of mixed quality.
What the fuck…?
uhh you mean about 17 seconds of the trailer wasn’t enough for you to know to avoid this forgettable pablum
I found detective Pikachu moribund, lacking in good jokes, structure or character. It beautifully represented the world and the creatures themselves but did nothing for me otherwise. I don’t think it’s the worst movie or whatever but it’s certainly not a high point in the much maligned video game movie genre.
“I found detective Pikachu moribund, lacking in good jokes, structure or character.” Oh, so it’s basically like the games! I’m kidding, but I mean, also deadly serious. The movie is based off of video games that have rarely contained a compelling narrative, so I’m not sure what anyone expected.That said, I took my then 6 year old and we both enjoyed it well enough in our own way. He liked the spectacle of seeing Pokemon on the big screen, and I loved watching him come to appreciate a franchise that I enjoy.
I expect, given the change in medium, to approach that medium with the seriousness it requires. Thinking there’s not going to be any kind of narrative because the original material is barebones is insane to me. It’s a movie, it isn’t a game.
“I found detective Pikachu moribund”What is this, The Dissolve?
I had to google the dissolve but I’m sure you’re making a very good joke and as such I congratulate you.
It was an A.V. Club spinoff where they said such things, though I doubt they would have stooped to even acknowledging Detective Pikachu in the first place. Imagine someone at the A.V. Club thinking that the content needed to be even more affected and joyless. Those people left to form The Dissolve, which failed in short order.
I can’t help using moribund ever since Alan Partridge was reviewed as such and spent the entire episode showing he knew what the word meant. I’ve found it funny ever since!
It is definitely funny in that context!
I think in this one he is right. This movie just screams crap.
A Dowd D+ is probably like a C from anybody else.
As noted above, he hated Detective Pikachu for some irrational reason.
Because its not a particularly good movie. It relies heavily on Pokemon fan service (for lack of a better word). I only have a cursory knowledge of Pokemon but I watched the movie because the trailers looked fun. But most all of the fun stuff was in the trailers. The movie itself was pretty bland and the story was paper thin (most kid friendly movies are though). Dowd’s review might be on the “tad too harsh” side but it was fair for the most part. It was a mildly amusing movie.
You make some good points about geography. As soon as I saw Montana I thought that would be the perfect place for Sonic to let loose and sprint without running into anything whether nature or manmade. Well, maybe Mongolia or New Mexico might be just as good.
its getting mostly decent to good reviews elsewhere. I think there is still a blindspot with a lot of critics like Dowd where a purely children focused movie is automatically docked if its not pixar ‘appeals to all ages equally.’
i think its ok to make a movie that children will truly enjoy, as long as its not actively noxious to an adult and i also think that critics should look at it through that lens (the kotaku article on it made the case quite well.)
Stay at home and watch “The French Connection” instead. You’re welcome.
Sister sites Kotaku and IO9 loved it , Jez gave it a bad review without having watched it seemingly …and while being a great writer Dowd hates fun , and I’ve heard moments of levity actually cause him physical pain , so I’ d skip his review and see the movie . ( which is fun , and probably so caused AA to have to shell out for some serious painkillers)
I took my kids to see it this weekend, and my overall impression was “exceedingly mediocre.” This movie has a ton of problems beside the central character being annoying and weird looking. First of all, very few of the jokes land, if any. Jim Carrey is enjoyably scenery-chewing, but he’s not particularly funny. He had a dance sequence that got a couple of chuckles out of me, but that was about it. Second of all, we’re told at the beginning of the movie that Sonic has some purpose, that he was given enormous power for a reason, but at the end of the movie we’re not any closer to knowing why than we were at the beginning. It just seems kind of tossed off, “Enormous power…destiny…blah blah blah…” Third, [SPOILERS] there is a put-upon underling to the villain who is somewhat sympathetic and is treated like garbage by the main villain, and he seems to be being set up to turn against his master and help the good guys…but he just kind of disappears. Okay, fine, they want to subvert expectations; this is not the time or the place. I could go on and on, but basically, it’s…not good.
Of course! What everyone wants out of a Sonic movie is a lecture about appreciating small town America!I just feel sorry for the poor animation studio, which got a lot of extra work out of this and therefore went bankrupt. Because the CG animation industry is a nightmare.
“…a lecture about appreciating small town America!”I would pay a moderate sum of money to hear John (he’ll always be Cougar to me) Mellencamp write and sing a theme song for this film.
Mellencamp is too busy tweeting endorsements for Mike Bloomberg! (I swear to God I’m not making this up)
That…that kind of breaks my mind.
…welp.
You either die a hero or live long enough to…you get the idea.
Little blue rodents, for you and me!Oo-oo-oo-oooh yeah!
which got a lot of extra work out of this and therefore went bankrupt
Seriously? Like that really happened?
Yeah, there’s been some talk about that this week in the wake of the VFX community’s frustration with the “Cats” bit at the Oscars. It seems a lot of FX studios are getting overworked at this point (CGI being so extensively used in so many tentpoles) and not always with proper compensation. There’s kind of been a race to the bottom in what the actual production companies will spend on these films’ effects, even with the astronomically high budgets some of them have as a whole.
Sudden growth is a problem no matter what kind of business. You have to hire people, spend money to crank out product, bill the customer, wait to be paid…all while hoping your bank account doesn’t run dry. Most people running smaller companies don’t think first about the liquidity trap this sets.
Yepp. The thing about VFX studios is that they’re constantly forced to underbid their competitors and then deal with producer-mandated unpaid extra work when the suits want one arbitrary thing changed after another. Happened with the studio that did the VFX for Life of Pi, and they won an Oscar for that movie.
and when they tried to explain that in their acceptance speech, they got played off.
It was a tacky move then and it only got worse after they went under.
I’ve never had anything to do with Pokemon but I thought Pikachu was pretty good.
No movie that climaxes with Bill Nighy mentally fusing with a Mewtwo and fusing humans with Pokemon is capable of being classed as bad.
One could argue that that should be the new bar FOR classifying movies as bad
Yes, it is
i thought the movie was decent fun until that climax, when it became unwatchably bad
Yeah the finale of detective Pikachu is certainly…well it’s something all right.
I mean, based on the admittedly limited sample size of ‘me and my friends’, one’s enjoyment of Detective Pikachu seems to be inversely proportional to one’s familiarity with the Pokemon franchise.
I live in Montana. It’s not bad. There’s lots of worse places. It’s always nice to see it mentioned in film.
I was afraid this movie would be horrible, but the dig at the more than passable Detective Pikachu has impacted the credibility I can give this review.
Most major reviews are pretty underwhelmed by the movie from the looks of it.
No offense intended to Dowd, but I wish Ignatiy reviewed this. It’s always a blast when he reviews something D+ or lower (see London Has Fallen or anything Stephen Seagal.)
Consensus seems to be it’s a cliché and inoffensive kids movie, but enjoyable nonetheless.
So what you’re saying is that I, an adult, should probably smoke a few bowls before seeing it?
maybe you should find some mushroom dung and smoke a few bowels
That sounds like a bad time
Unlike driving a 240 just like that one, which I used to do! Except for the black wheels.
I went through a weird phase with black wheels. At least those had a legit powder-coat, instead of spray can. I now hate black wheels lol.
I think Detective Pikachu was good, but this has a hell of a lot more in common with the Alvin movies.
A part of me was actually disappointed they cleaned up the horrific original sonic design. It was truly hideous and would have at least been fascinating to see that in action (in an uncanny valley/nightmare type of way).
We have Cats for our CGI nightmare fuel. Sonic has been through so much hell throughout his life. He’s about to add “underwhelming movie” to his list of failures. He didn’t need a creepy toothy nightmare face as well.
he’s put through all this hell because he deserves it. what’s the ratio of good to bad sonic games at this point? the soil was poisoned from the start
Ah, the D plus, the gentlemen’s F, as in ‘Fuck me, I’ve wasted 100 minutes watching Sonic The Hedgehog’…
I thought that was a D-?Also, based on this review, what did this movie do to earn the +?
I think mildly entertaining Jim Carrey madness may have put it over the top there.
Sad that I didn’t feel that way about The Grinch….
and a pathetic Jim Carrey…
I’m starting to think that maybe video games aren’t the best thing to base a movie on. 😮
I’ll openly admit the resident evil movies are a guilty pleasureof mine. But those have so little resemblance to the games, they barely count. Detective Pikachu is closest to a pure success, and even that doesn’t really count because Pokemon has been on TV and animated movies for decades.
I’m not saying video games shouldn’t be made into movies, but the game probably should have solid characters, decent story and… the people who adapt the Marvel comics.
So get all that together and maybe, maybe you’ll have a foundation for a video game movie that doesn’t suck.
I think the main problem is that when you try to adapt a video game, you’re not *really* adapting a story. Video game stories tend to be long, repetitive and heavily objective-based, and they don’t really translate into neat, 90-120 minute narratives with satisfying character arcs and interesting themes. (There are exceptions, of course.)I’d say that a good video game adaptation should aim to recreate the world of the game, and try to tell an original story within that world while highlighting what makes it unique and appealing. The problem is, most video game adaptations are lazy cash-grabs, so they just settle for telling a generic story against a generic backdrop, with a handful of recognisable characters thrown in for marketing purposes.
(There are exceptions, of course.)
They should start with adapting these then. 🙂 I agree otherwise.
I agree. There’s no fundamental reason why a video game’s IP can’t be turned into a good movie: just like any other movie, you need good writing and directing and acting. As you say, they’re mostly lazy cash-grabs: the talent involved is more likely to go into it without the intention to do great work, the studio is more likely to meddle with it, and you’ve also usually got the game publisher (or whoever owns the IP) meddling too, since they tend to be giant companies who can throw their weight around and not (as with books adapted to film) individual authors who can’t.
I actually have somewhat high hopes for the Jordan Vogt-Roberts Metal Gear project.
yeah the resident evil movies were never great but they were always a guilty pleasure of mine
the first Resident Evil movie is great, doesn’t matter how derivative it is (Cube especially) it’s a lot of fun and tightly scripted
Collectively, the Resident Evil movies are the apex of video-game adaptations in movies. They move at a good pace, they have enthusiastic casts, and they tell stories that are internally coherent but also zany and ridiculous as hell. Apocalypse is maybe my favorite: it goes all-in with its own dumbness, it pulls off a few solid scenes, and the stuff that doesn’t work is so overheated that it plays as camp.
I think what Detective Pikachu had going for it was fully committing to imagining an alternate world where Pokemon walked around with us, which is what the audience has always wanted to see. If the Sonic creators had done that and moved the setting of this to whatever crazy tropical dreamscape world Sonic lives in in the games, I think it would have at least been more visually interesting. Instead they went the lazy route and just dropped him in the middle of the US and got rid of basically eveyrthing fun from the games.
I have hopes for that in the sequel.
I liked Silent Hill for all its weird creepiness, and have never played the game.
Silent Hill is…it’s passable as a horror film.
As an adaptation it’s…not awful as much as it is frustrating. Like, it tries to get it right and does nail some of the beats, but between studio demands and surface lifting of certain elements for the sake of fan service, it feels like a mess.
(Biggest example being the use of fan favorite antagonist Pyramid Head. In the movie, he’s just this ominous heavy that rips someone’s skin off. Then you see his role in Silent Hill 2 and…suddenly skin-ripping seems like the lesser evil.)
I’ll admit it took too much exposition to make it comprehensible. But yeah, it was passable as a horror movie.
The silent hill movie got the imagery right, but the best game entities are known for quite a lot of psychological depth. Like the nurses and pyramid head actually have symbolic meaning in the game but the movie just tosses them in because they look cool.
That makes sense. I’d always wondered why fans of the game really did not seem to care for the film.ETA: Plus Sean Bean didn’t die! How does that happen IN A HORROR MOVIE?? Totally subverted expectations.
Certainly not when the premise behind the movie is this bizarre 80s throwback of “what if we just inserted this fantastical video game character into the real world??”
Yeah, there’s a lot of movies about licensed cartoons/comics/video games that can’t seem to grasp that maybe these fictional animated characters should just stay animated. But no we gotta saddle them with a real life friend.
Also as long as Disney keeps making a cool billion making live-action versions of all their animated movies we’re gonna get bad CG monstrosities. Maybe human teeth Sonic got fixed but mark my words this will happen again. Nintendo will forget the lessons the Mario Bros. movie taught society and eventually we will see a supposed-to-be-cute-but-actually-horrifying Toad on screen, mark my words.
I dearly hope the Illumination SMB movie takes place almost entirely within the Mushroom Kingdom.
Don’t let Uwe Boll know. You’ll crush his spirit!
I’ll keep that in mind. Wouldn’t want to be challenged to a boxing match with the guy.
Counterpoint: Let Uwe Boll know. You’ll crush his spirit!
Nah, he’ll just challenge One Punch to a boxing match.
TAX BREAK: THE MOVIE
There’s one prime example of doing it right: the first MORTAL KOMBAT movie is amazing! The next, substantially less so.
I think I actually preferred the Street Fighter movie because it didn’t take itself too seriously. But both films were… not great.
Best scene in that movie.
At least in live action, some of the animated ones are more successful.I will say though that some of the live action ones are guilty pleasures of mine. The Van Damme Street Fighter is certainly watchable and there’s a good movie in there somewhere. I know the Mario movie is bad but can watch it anyway. I also saw Wing Commander before any of the games and can ignore some of its flaws.
I’m starting to think that maybe video games aren’t the best thing to base a movie on.I dunno, that Call Of Duty movie, 1917, seems to be doing pretty well…
Umm, excuse me. *Pushes up glasses* Call of Duty is a World War 2 franchise.
That will come as interesting news to people playing Modern Warfare…
They’re just skipping out on the video game series that really deserve it, or completely fucking it up for the ones that do *cough* Warcraft *cough*. Had that movie been about Arthas, people would have loved it.Halo is a series that at it’s peak, definitely deserved a movie. Ultimately the problem is a disconnect between Hollywood, and what makes a video game special. They need the writers for the game to create a script, then have a Hollywood writer help adapt it for the big screen.
I would have loved if Warcraft had been basically an adaptation of Arthas’s story from WC3, including the Culling of Stratholme, although I’m not sure what the climax would have been. I think it’d be better suited to a TV show. What with all the billions being thrown around for fantasy adaptations (Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time) I bet someone could put that together. Hell, do it anthology style: three seasons telling the stories from WC1, 2, and 3, and then get into the WoW lore.
Hell, do it anthology style: three seasons telling the stories from WC1, 2, and 3, and then get into the WoW lore.Best idea yet. You can have each major expansion be a film that ties into the show.
The first mortal Kombat movie for its time was actually very good
My favorite baffling video game they keep trying to make a movie out of is Uncharted. A video game who’s entire premise is “let’s make an Indiana Jones game”.
Still waiting for one where they just lean into the core ridiculousness of a given game world instead of trying to dramatize or “ground” it in reality.If someone can make a Lego movie — Lego! Movie! — that was coherent, clever and heartfelt, then someone can make a Sonic or Mario movie worth watching.
OBJECTION! We already have a Mario movie worth watching!
Like any movie genre, it can be made well or not so well. Mostly people who are good creative talents tend to focus on making their own ideas come to life rather than adapt a video game’s, but I also think some of the problems can come from the audience side. Take a famous and critically lauded filmmaker, get them to make a video game movie, and there will still be some hesitation in appreciating its merits.
As video game narratives get more complex and fleshed out, I’m sure decent adaptations will arise. The problem is that most of the adaptations we’ve had so far are based on 90s properties that have about as much back story as a board game.Resident Evil series should have been decent material (if a bit campy) but imo they really blew it. Though apparently others on here love them. Could easily see something like The Last of Us being adapted at some point into a really compelling movie or series though, and plenty of other games in that vein are starting to be made these days.
As video game narratives get more complex and fleshed out, I’m sure decent adaptations will arise.
I find your amount of faith… disturbing. 😉
Counterpoint. I will endure a thousand Sonic The Hedgehog: The Movies if it gives the world just one of these:
I like that, according to Rotten Tomatoes, Angry Birds 2 is the peak of the genre. Not only because it shows where the bar is for computer game films but also because Angry Birds 2 was *whispers it* actually pretty good. (At least for this dad of a 4 year old who has sat through many a worse kids cartoon)
Does it still have the fucked up xenophobia of the first, or did they realize that’s probably NOT the kind of thing you want in a kids’ film?
I dunno, Goldeneye was pretty good.
Movies have an incredibly shaky record, but the Castlevania series on Netflix at least kicks ass.
See I don’t even think this is an issue of Sonic being a video game. I think this is the same lazy idea of transplanting [character] into real world. Think like the terrible Canon group version of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe or Howard the Duck. Both cases there is a rich and vibrant world that the character inhabits so instead we throw them onto Earth. Why not set a movie on Sonic’s planet with Tails and Knuckles? Its just lazy and dumb storytelling to put the character on contemporary Earth.
Fine. But can we still have Captain Lou Albano as the host of a live-action Super Mario Brothers TV show?
How long before we get the ‘Release The Scary Human Teeth Cut’ campaign along the lines of the ‘Release The Zach Snyder Cut’ dolts?
b-b-but I actually kind of want to see both of those
Digitise the Scary Human Sonic into Justice League and you’re onto something….
Henry Cavell’s CGI (yet mustache free) lip v Sonic’s human teeth? Sounds like a winner!
Edit in annoying Sonic quips into the spots with no dialogue, and have him digitally inserted awkwardly standing next to Superman for some true internet cringe.
This’ll shut em up
Ive been clamoring for that ever since the redesign was shown. I want to see a REAL utter trainwreck, not what looks to be just a bland boring bad movie.
This isn’t shocking. I figured that it would suck even if the character model was slightly better. Guess the extra effort was for not.
That’s because Jim Carey is still in the movie.
Oh, and there’s also the fact that this version of Sonic is from outer space and hence has to lay lowSonic is from the planet Mobius. So that’s accurate.
The only thing a Sonic the Hedgehog game should be is a recording of an expert gamer speedrunning the original projected on an IMAX screen.
This review sounds like one for any superhero movie, with the main character replaced with Sonic. Either it’s a harsh review for a still fun family movie, or it misses the fanboy goggles because it’s not the eleventieth movie in a franchise.
Willow, while flawed, is a great movie. I never saw Xillow or Yillow – anyone recommend them?
I was sure this would be bad but man, describing Detective Pikachu as “lousy” makes me doubt. If those movies are on par, and I liked Detective Pikachu… holy shit am I about to go see the damn Sonic movie of all things?
While I never expected this movie to be good, I think AV Club reviews have officially crossed a line of cynicism to a point where they’re no longer helpful. They’re just the hipster at the bar, shitting on everything, even when it’s pretty enjoyable on its own terms. Nothing is good enough for the AV Club, because they’re too cool for school, and that is fucking exhausting.
Ah, forget it gimcrack – it’s Gimcracktown.
It’s February, there’s just a lot of mediocre movies out is all.
Mediocre is fine. Mediocre is allowed to exist. Except on the AV Club.Take Detective Pikachu, which this review called “lousy too”. It got 69% on RT, and for someone who’s never seen a pokemon cartoon in his life, but watched it solely because of Ryan Reynold’s charming ass, I thought it was actually rather entertaining.This movie is currently sitting at 64%, also a “fresh” score.Both these movies are held in lower regard than the 3rd kid’s movie, Hop in which the reviewer infers Marden puts in a BETTER performance, despite it’s 25% score.There’s being overly harsh on movies, and then there’s being a contrarian asshole like Armond White.
I think the AV Club’s stable of critics are generally less willing to review genre films entirely on their own terms than some other mainstream publications. Which, if you’re unable or unwilling to turn off your brain and overlook the kind of earnest schlock that better films have moved on from decades ago, is pretty valuable in a review. And I would argue that mediocrity is unacceptable when both the opportunity and actual costs of seeing a film that fails to rise above the level of bland children’s potboiler work are so high.
I don’t generally like the “turn off your brain” argument. There’s merit in calling out somebody’s laziness resulting in a mediocre movie, because they just couldn’t be fucking BOTHERED to turn in anything better.But there’s daylight between an earnest but mediocre movie like Detective Pikachu, a genuinely half-assed mediocre movie like this one, and a legitimately bad movie like Hop apparently was.Besides, looking at AV Club scores, I see they gave Six Underground a better score than all of these, and that was literally unwatchable.
Re: “turn off your brain”; while writing my reply I did hesitate to bring that up, because you certainly didn’t say it and I apologize that I inadvertently seemed to put those words in your mouth.I agree that there’s a pretty wide spectrum within mediocre, and also between mediocre and bad, but as my own tastes have evolved (which is NOT to say as they’ve gotten better), I’ve found that my reaction to any movie that falls below a certain threshold of perceived script/production/directing competence is largely the same, which could be best summed up as befuddled anger at myself for sitting through the whole thing. Based on that metric, Dowd’s and I.V.’s reviews have turned out to be incredibly useful for me.
A 64% on Rotten Tomatoes means one-third of critics thought it was an outright bad movie. Which is a minority, sure, but not a tiny one.On Metacritic, a much better barometer, it’s at a 45, and Dowd’s review grades out at 33. He dislikes it slightly more than average but is hardly an outlier.Also, you’re clearly going to see this movie anyway so why do you especially care?
Nope. I was never going to see this movie. Good try though.Consider this just the straw that broke the camels back, after their enthusiastic and repeated shitting on Jojo Rabbit.
OK, I stand corrected. I just think the idea that any one reviewer or website should mirror the critical consensus all of the time is silly. There’s plenty of much-praised recent movies that the AVClub did like (e.g. Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Parasite, John Wick 3, Toy Story 4). If an individual reviewer doesn’t occasionally differ from the consensus, then they’re too scared of looking bad to actually give their opinion and are therefore useless.
I do have to agree that the THERE IS NOTHING SPECIAL ABOUT JOJO RABBIT; next article YOU ARE A BAD PERSON IF YOU DERIVED ANY ENJOYMENT FROM JOJO RABBIT; next article JOJO RABBIT ACTUALLY IS HITLER is getting a little old. It was disappointing eventually, and especially that it won the oscar over Little Women, and somewhat overpraised, but quite a bit of it was rather good, particularly ScarJo and the adorable little guy who played Yorkie.
Meanwhile there is seemingly less rejoicing in what is great about movies. I mean we all love movies, the people who work for this site presumably do so because they do as well, so why more articles about what’s politically lacking in movies and fewer about what we should be celebrating?
Works 50 percent or more of the time, 64 percent of the time!
My personal Rotten Tomatoes threshold is 80% – below that number, and I’m almost certainly going to end up fast-forwarding to see how it ends because they’ve lost me by the second act.
If something has a 69% percent on rotten tomatoes, that means that 31% of reviewers thought it was mediocre.Look, the last thing this culture needs is everyone getting brow beaten into saying soul-less IP is good.
OK but you can’t honestly tell me you enjoy kids movies that rely on already-dated pop culture references and the like. When I see that, I know the laziness factor is going to be off the charts.
Defensive person misusing Rotten Tomatoes scores.DRINK
I generally prefer a cynical “glass half empty” type review like AV Club does to like, Io9 basically giving every genre film a glowing review, no matter what. I don’t want to just blindly accept any flaws in a genre film just cause in the end, “well, at least it was fun!”
buddy, only clowns have this reaction to reviews. you are a clown.
You’re not wrong. They spent this Oscar season alone constantly shitting on 1917, Jojo Rabbit, Joker, Irishman, Bombshell, Two Popes, etc, etc, but not because they want to be too cool for school, but because said films failed the identity politics/purity/wokeness test. Katy Rifle seriously argued that 1917 getting a nom over Little Women is sexist, while Dowd argued it shouldn’t have because he and the rest of G/O media has a bias and grudge against Sam Mendes for some reason.
You’ve posted these same criticisms of AV Club writers at least twice as often as any of them have complained about any of those movies, and never mind that it’s actually their job to talk about their opinions, however derivative you might find them. You’re not getting paid to constantly point out the chip on your shoulder. Lucky us that you’re willing to do us this service for free, and so frequently at that.
So? Because of this we’re not allowed to ever criticize them? That we’re supposed to auto agree with them at all times no matter how bad or dumb their opinions are? Last time I checked it is a free country and a free website and we’re allowed to freely express our opinions to let them know their opinions and writings suck.Fuck out of here with such stupid nonsense. Luckily there are idiots like you to remind us why the AVClub has been swirling down the drain all these years. That they “get paid” to write such click baity nonsense because there are mouth drooling morons like you that mindlessly, uncritcally lap it up and attack those who aren’t part of the woke mind herd to fall in line and accept it. Go ahead and reply back with more attacks and bullshit as is your wont. Truck in more of your sheep/woke trolls like natureslayer and etc to really get this flame war going.
This is not a reply to my post (Note that from the very first you are arguing against nothing I actually said) but rather your compulsion taking over you yet again, causing you to go into rant mode the instant you’re challenged. All I’m saying is that repetitiveness is boring. You’re boring. Your repetitiveness is boring. You are boring because you keep repeating yourself.
If you think i’m so boring then you can stop replying to me and trying to suck my dick with your boring and repetitive whiny rant, you boring, creepy, two-faced little shit. I just wanted to your bitch ass to see this reply. Don’t bother replying because I will just auto dismiss with even so much as glancing at any of your stupid bullshit you ever say to me ever again including this stupid and pointless tirade you made to me. Please go fuck yourself and eat shit forever.
It’s very telling that you would describe my posts as tirades.
“They’re just the hipster at the bar”GODS, I wish this site was still this good. Keep dreaming.
yes it’s so hipster of them to not like this half-assed cash grab
Oh fuuuuuuck off, they’re the hipsters in the bar? Do people still talk and complain about hipsters? Are you stuck in 2008? Enjoyable on its own terms? Dude, you can like a movie and still let other people dislike films without saying that they’re pretentious. Or assuming that you have the true and correct opinion because you liked it.What’s fucking exhausting is complaining about someone’s negative review because you happened to like it. And not even providing any substance to your enjoyment and instead shits on other people for presumed opinions.
I don’t understand how you could have seen any of the trailers for this movie and not expect it to get pilloried by critics. This had the stink of shit from its announcement, it’s not “too cool for school” to say a bad cartoon is bad. You’re the presumable adult trying to defend the honor of Blue Fast Rat
They’ve been like this forever. Any sad sack bullshit in a non-English language, from a non-American director, that cannot easily be seen by the general public is a surefire A.Not that the Sonic movie doesn’t actually suck, because I’m pretty sure it does.
or maybe this movie is just a piece of shit.
Maybe you should go find a website that aligns closer to your taste if you can’t handle the negative reviews, then. AV Club gives plenty of positive reviews and has introduced me to a ton of shit that I really enjoy. Personally, I like that Dowd doesn’t grade on a curve just because it’s for kids and it’s “fun!!!!!” So many sites give things like this a high score based on that curve, as you pointed out when you cited Rotten Tomatoes, so why does this website have to be like ever other one? Can’t people like me have a place to enjoy reviews, too? Or does every site have to love the same shit because RT said so? Hell, i09 is on this same network and will pander to everyone’s fandom if that’s what’s needed. Dowd’s review pretty clearly explains why he didn’t like it and justified why he gave it the score he did, to compare that to Armond White because of the score is silly.
If they are too good for these movies, why review these movies?Apparently this one is actually half-way decent. I’ll never know for sure. I haven’t watched a “kids” movie since the original Lion King, and doubt I’ll ever see one again. Not because I’m too cool. Just they have nothing for me. I am not their target audience. So why does a/v club review these movies? Just to demolish them?
Back in my day, we came to the AVC web site to read reviews where they literally fellated the movies! Any movie, didn’t matter what the RT score was! All we cared about was a solid A+ and watching a movie get sucked off. Nowadays, it’s all just griping that shitty movies are shitty! MAVCGA.
Agreed. I watched this and Color Out of Space this weekend. A lot of overlap between the two really but I brought my kid to the wrong one (JK!). But Asylum movies get D+ Uwe Bowell gets a D+ C’mon, Jim Carrey alone is a C.
Hedgehogs aren’t rodents.
“They’ve made over Sonic’s personality, too, in so much as the rodent in the running shoes ever had one.”Sorry to be that guy, but hedgehogs aren’t rodents. They’re a member of the Erinaceinae family, which I’ll admit doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as nicely.
Ah, so what would’ve fixed everything is if Sonic had been redesigned to be ALL disturbingly human teeth. Basically that thing from the first season of Channel Zero, but it can run really fast. Actually, someone should make a horror movie about a super speed tooth golem. That could be fun.
Sonic Dentata!
H.P. Lovecraft’s: Deathhog
From the director’s cut:
WHAT THE FRAK
Movies like this make me just amazed that the Mario Bros. movie was actually made in the 1990s.Like there’s corporate crap that is just completely forgettable (this, the latest star wars), where they throw a bunch of money on screen and say “LOOK SHINY”.Then there’s like Mario Bros. completely what the fuckery where they swung for the fences and created something so magnificently bizarre we still talk about it.
This guy is crazy I love the movie beginning to end I go to almost every screening or Premier there is and I think I know my movies by now. I couldn’t disagree more. Sitting in the audience of the world premiere with numerous cheers yells claps and laughs I don’t know what movie he was watching. If you wanna know the truth take a look at my reviews 🤷🏽♀️ @lovebrandimarie
Is it better than Garfield 2?
Being a victim of disembowelling is better than Garfield 2
I need to remember this guys name and be wary of his future reviews. Feels like a super bias, non-gamer, to me. Maybe this is just a one-off poor call, but this is pretty scathing compared to sources I know I can rely on. I’d recommend going to YouTube and checking out the spoiler free review by Laymen Gaming. They are some of the realest dudes on the Internet, and have never steered me wrong.
Nah, mate. Detective Pikachu was pretty good.
Meh, the Vin Diesel “family” crack in the commercial was funny.
If I use the logic of the enemy of my enemy is my friend, then I’m definitely going to see this movie, since I loved Detective Pikachu. Also, most of the reviews I’m seeing about Sonic are positive, if you enjoy that kind of childish and poitless movie. Also, my 2 year old can’t stop babbling about wanting to see “Sonikini” as he call it.
Obviously the writer never enjoyed the games if these are his core complaints, they must be an absolute joy at parties too.
I knew this movie would be a mess when I heard they didn’t go for the cameo opportunity of a lifetime…Ron Jeremy. #theoriginalhedgehog
Well, I’ll be.“Gimcrack” is a real word.
Games Radar gave it a 3/5 stars. Did you see the same movie? Predictably, the script rarely rises above functional. But while recent game adaptation Detective Pikachu had one eye on the middle-aged audience who played these ’90s classics the first time round, Sonic is aimed squarely at a younger viewers, emulating the blindingly fast and brightly coloured nature of its eponymous ’hog. Ignoring the pandering anal-probing gags and Vin Diesel references, the primary appeal for older viewers is nostalgia; it’s fitting for a character whose heyday was 30 years ago that the entire film should feel like such a throwback. This comes to the fore most clearly in Jim Carrey, whose performance is like the missing link between Ace Ventura and The Mask. If you can sanction his boundless buffoonery, Carrey’s Robotnik is a scene-stealing treat – a brainiac with a mean streak who even has a dance number. You get the impression 90 percent of his odd line deliveries and gurning to camera must have been improvised in the moment. For Carrey’s performance to be the strangest thing in a film about a blue space hedgehog tells you everything you need to know.And for a film that could have coasted on fart gags and flossin’ (both, admittedly, present as well), there are flashes of creativity. A bar fight ends with a visually impressive, family-friendly spin on the Quicksilver scene in X-Men: Days Of Future Past, and Dr Robotnik’s arsenal of HAL-inspired murder-bots are effectively deployed in one madcap highway chase sequence.Ending with a pair of mid-credits scenes that don’t so much tease a sequel as outright confirm intentions to make one, it’s a film that should have die-hard fans doing loop-the-loops. Whether Sonic has the box-office mileage to make it that far remains to be seen, but on the basis of this better-than-expected first instalment, further fast times wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.
Are you telling me that Games Radar, a video-game centric website, just like Kotaku, a video-game centric website, gave a more favourable review to a video-game movie than a movie-centric website that reviews a much wider range of movies? Well that’s just crazy talk!
Also the rejoinder, “Did you see the same movie?” Which places Games Radar as the objective compass point of the Sonic movie by which all other media sites must revolve.
And, since I just went and read the Kotaku review out of curiosity, it’s pretty plainly looking for any way to avoid calling the movie bad. It repeats “It’s fine!” enough to make clear that the reviewer was trying to self-convince.
It’s like they don’t understand that if you’re being served garbage you have to complain if you want it to stop, not tell yourself it’s fine and eat it anyway.
also a 3/5 is a bad review.
Yeah, Joe Patroni doesn’t seem to realize that 3/5 is a D grade, just like the one he’s complaining about here.
In school, yes a 3/5 is a D.In baseball 3/5 at bat is pretty good.In movie reviews, 3/5 is considered average. Not bad.
I mean, if you want to make your argument all about how this movie is at best average, more power to you.
But your argument is that they must have not seen the same movie because some fucking site said it’s average and he said it’s bad. As if people didn’t have different tastes or value different things in movies. Are you even an adult? How can you function in the world as an adult with this kind of garbage reasoning?
For movies, that’s average.
no it isn’t you just have low standards.
i take that back that was pithy for no reason, i don’t know you.
3/5 isn’t a bad review. It generally goes 1/5 = horrible, 2/5 = the reviewer did not like it, 3/5 = the reviewer did like it, but it’s flawed, 4/5 = the reviewer liked it a LOT, 5/5 = the reviewer thought this movie was excellent, a highlight of the year, etc.
lmao who’s going to gamesradar for a movie review? i don’t go to the a.v. club for a review of the resident evil games
But this isn’t a game it’s a movie. Why would I go to a games site for a movie review. Also, for the people in the back: DIFFERENT HUMANS HAVE DIFFERENT OPINIONS ABOUT MOVIES
Yeah, it definitely sounds like exactly the same movie. I’m surprised you seem to find it so inconceivable that one reviewer would like it and another wouldn’t.
I come here to see a review of the episode of The End of the F***ing World I just watched, and there’s nothing to be found. Except this. Congrats your site is now fucking garbage.
So it’s NOT a sequel to “Hop”? I was hoping these were elaborate prequels to an Avengers-type movie where James Marsden is essentially a Disney Princess with an army of animals at his command. Working title: Snow vs. White: Battle for the Kingdom.
Easy enough to work Enchanted into that scenario too.
…I know you’re going Disney princesses route here, but I imagine this and I just want Marsden rallying them a la The Wicked Witch of the West
“Fly, my pretties! Fly! AHAHAHAHAHAAAA!”
That’s the surprise twist in Act 3.
I get Rocky and Bullwinkle the movie vibes from this, and I loved that as a kid, so idk maybe some kids out there will love it!
They’ve made over Sonic’s personality, too, in so much as the rodent in the running shoes ever had one.I don’t think hedgehogs are rodents, are they?
Forget it, he’s rolling.
Expected something more?
Can we stop referring to all small mammals as rodents? Hedgehogs are not rodents. And since Sonic, at least this version, is from another planet, I doubt he’s even a hedgehog.
Pedants unite!
People confuse them with porcupines, which are rodents.
Now I learned something new about porcupines!I’ve pet a hedgehog before. Their spines don’t seem all that spiny, but I guess if I pet it the wrong way, I would have regretted it.
Needs more Korean girls having sex. Then it’d win all the awards.
wahhh this movie website likes parasite and doesn’t like somic the hodgepog it’s almost like they have an appreciation for artistry or something
Did you even see Parasite
Yes there’s a scene where a Korean girl gets fingered before she had sex with her husband. Hence what I said.
Literally the least notable seconds
Pretty sure there’s seconds which are least notable, look I’ve seen it and I enjoyed it for what it was, Korean Joker only instead of it being a Martin Scorsese Tribute Movie it was an Inside Number Nine Tribute Movie. I enjoyed it, great movie. It had a bit of a downer ending when you realise that the dad will never see his folks again but that’s what you get for being a stinky stabby boy. Again don’t get why they’re doing a televised adaptation of a film ripped wholesale from an existing television adaptation. It’s like doing a TV Adaptation of Serenity. Like I can’t see how doing an Inside Number Nine Adaptation counts as an Original Screenplay when there’s literally zero things original about the screenplay but yeah 910. Would recommend it to anyone. Can’t wait for his next original film about a chemistry teacher that gets cancer and winds up selling meth.
What the fuck is Inside Number NineThis is literally the first comparison between the two I’ve ever seen, and a Google search shows absolutely nothing
Inside Number Nine is a dark comedy British anthology TV Series. Watch it, you’d love it. It’s like a British Twilight Zone but without the political messages.
Okay, so which episode did Parasite completely rip its entire plot from?I’m also interested how Parasite completely and unoriginally ripped off a show without political messages despite being an extremely political movie, but I suppose seeing the episode you’re describing would answer that.
Well maybe not completely plagiarized but the plot was a weird mishmash between South Korean Class Divide and to me the Inside Number Nine episodes Til Death Do Us Part and A Quiet Night In. Like the plot of What Looks Like A Familial Drama Turns Out To Involve A Chained Up Lover And It Has Something To Do With The Help is literally the plot of Til Death Do Us Part. Only the help is the chained up in the basement where nobody knows person and not her husband. They even do the same trick where a character mentions how much food the person eats only for it to turn out that the food’s going to someone else. There’s even a scene focusing on packaged noodles. Like again I love Parasite. 3rd best film released in 2019 after Uncut Gems and Knives Out.
Inside Number Nine didn’t invent the whole “there’s another person secretly living in the house” plot – it’s a common enough twist that The Simpsons had a parody of it, and Victorian fiction absolutely adored it (particularly when paired with a ghost story setup, with the most widely-read and adapted one today being Jane Eyre). Sometimes the hidden person is evil, sometimes they’re a helpless victim, sometimes they’re weak and pitiable, sometimes they’re conniving… but that appears to be the only real connection to Parasite, and it’s a connection that has nothing to do with the first hour of the film, or any of how the twist actually plays out.Of all the possible sources a Korean director might have for putting this age-old twist in his movie, the likelihood of it being a British anthology show is pretty far down there, particularly when the episode aired four months before Parasite’s filming started and five years after the first treatment was written.The only way I can see that making any sense is if that show was your first exposure to the trope and Parasite was your second.
Ah yes, the Gentlemen’s F.
Sorry, Benny ShwaZ.
Sonic isn’t a real character to begin with. This is why a Mario Brothers movie was sure to fail. Mascots make bad leads.
Sonic shootin’ ropes
Meow?
Every time I think about Detective Pikachu, I immediately get frustrated by one fact that no one ever mentions:
How in the fuck didn’t Justice Smith recognize his dad’s voice? I mean, the first time Pikachu spoke to me in my dad’s voice, we would have had a discussion.
James Marsden deserves better
Paragraph 2: Sega’s answer to Mario was basically an emblem of kid-courting ’90s attitude… That’s not really the vibe of this big-screen Sonic… he’s more of a plucky dreamer who just wants to make some friends. That’s not so easy for the guy though—in part because he’s as annoyingly hyperactive as a kid who’s just wolfed down three bowls of sugary cereal.Paragraph 4:Sonic, theoretically sympathetic for his alien-orphan backstory, is actually kind of a selfish prick—when not starting bar fights just for the experience, he’s getting all judgmental about his new companion’s career aspirations.So is he plucky but annoying or a selfish prick? These two statements seem incongruous.
The reviewer is named something but goes by A.A. Dowd. his pretentiousness is apparent before any words are written and he cares not for your accurate criticism.
is my cousin a.j. who works at the auto shop a pretentious hipster because he doesn’t go by his first name?corollary, has anybody in your life ever been pleased to see you walk into a room?
Corollary answer: Your mom, her bedroom.And no, A.J. is not pretentious hipster because hipsters don’t work in auto shops and, unless he falsely recommends unnecessary repairs, doesn’t probably treat people like idiots.
Thanks for playing.
buddy it’s 2020 we’re throwing the word ‘hipster’ in the trash. it didn’t mean anything in 2008 and it really doesn’t mean anything now.
Or maybe his name is just long? Everybody is “pretentious” when they have the nerve not to like whatever childish garbage people like you are infatuated with.
Not infatuated with Sonic in the least, but he treats it as if it was intended to be an oscar contender or some intricately deep personal film.
Its not even a film for fanbois. Its a pure kids film using a character from a majority of the current generation of parents with kids 4-15(?). Don’t know what age kids lose interest in kid centric movies.
He treats it like it’s a movie he had to sit through and review. That’s all. Kids 4-15 (and let’s not exaggerate here, unless you’re a proud, confident geek, no kid older than maybe 11 is going to admit to liking a movie like this) don’t work as film reviewers. I’m sure AA Dowd knows there are good kid movies and bad ones. He thought that one was bad. Who gives a shit?
he treats it as if it was intended to be an oscar contender or some intricately deep personal film
No, he treats it like a movie for kids that was bad, as opposed to the many movies for kids that are good which come out every year. He’s not holding it to the standard of Lawrence of Arabia or The Woman in the Dunes, he’s holding it to the standard of Trolls and How To Train Your Dragon and it doesn’t clear that bar.
“It was obviously going to suck so this guy is pretentious for saying it sucked and then describing why, which is the job he’s paid to do” is a weird-ass take.
I think that’s what he’s saying – the movie wanted to make Sonic a scrappy yet lovable outcast looking for connection, but he comes across like a prick instead.
Sounds like some college friends I had, especially the bar fight part.
Both. From the review, Sonic guilt-trips a companion along on a road trip. That’s both a selfish prick move and an annoying plucky dreamer move.
Michael Scott was plucky and looking for friendship and also kinda annoying but his actions were that of a selfish prickThe dichotomy between what people want out of life and the way they choose to carry themselves is pretty prevalent in real life. It’s very very common within storytelling (sometimes unintentional, sometimes intentional)
I maintain after the initial character design backlash, they spent millions fixing a movie no one would’ve seen anyway.Maybe Millennial parents with kids, but otherwise who is the audience for this?
That’s exactly who its for, parents and their kids. Several other reviewers not occupied by sniffing their own farts, like A.A. Dowd, have stated that it is barely a nod to nostalgia and purely a fun kids film.
And I agree, after seeing it, because if you go into the movie expecting to see your childhood memories and expectations on film, demanding true to game accuracy (aside from their sonic eyes debacle), you will be disappointed. Its fun and fast and over the top with Jim carey’s Robotnik. I’d say a solid 7/10 for a kids film.
Movies based on video games should NOT be produced by Hollywood production companies that change the core of what makes a video game great. If you look at fanmade movies on YouTube, you will see that movies based on video games can be PHENOMENAL if the right people get behind it. Video game fan movies are a product of love, unlike Hollywood who only cares about the paychecks.I might give Sonic a shot. I didn’t really care for the story of Detective Pikachu, but seeing Pokemon in live action made me happy at heart. I think Sonic would be the same experience.
Here’s everything wrong with this movie: it has Jim Carrey in it.
Take this how you will, but he’s totally the best part.
Hedgehogs aren’t rodents. Aren’t even remotely related to rodents.
this is my favorite kind of review because it really brings out the ‘hey don’t be mean to the movie!’ crowd. your emotional reaction to this review will be stronger than any you get from the movie!
They’re really fucking bonkers.I can sort of get it with adaptations of comic books and stories because people really want the new telling of the story to evoke the same feelings they had reading the original story.But this is just a character from a video game. Even when I was 8 and loved the Mario brothers the fact the film was not super didn’t really bother me because it was just a film some people made based on some characters I liked in another form.The fact that people are really invested in a childrens film that happens to use some particular imagery from some old games (it’s not like they’re even using characters really – Sonic is “hedgehog who runs fast and is 90s idea of cool”) is one thing. Invest in whatever you want to invest in. The fact they need to try and argue that in the internet equivalent of public is asinine.
well also people are just like ‘well other reviewers gave it a more positive review, so you must be A JERK’ i truly think we just live in an era where people will take any excuse to ‘argue’ with what they construe as ‘authority’, but only in the most superficial ways. a person doesn’t like something? well FUCK THEM because I WANT TO LIKE IT. i think it’s truly a sickness that people get so worked up about any form of criticism that isn’t ‘you’re a smart boy and you made a good decision’
Oh yeah, there’s some desperate need for validation of their pop culture choices. People have differing opinions, that’s the joy of life. There’s nothing wrong with being a grown adult who’s still excited by a Sonic film, just own it – don’t get all pissy because a critic pointed out it’s kinda an anodyne kids film.
I definitely think there’s something about the way nerd culture shifted to mainstream, there was definitely an air of stuff like that being “smarter” and “better” than the mainstream stuff back when it was counterculture (talking more about comics, as I said it’s not like video game adaptations have a stellar track record) and now a bunch of mainstream “needs to appeal to everyone” stuff is out people are confused between wanting to like the thing they like but also wanting to feel superior to the normies
also big pun on saying the mario bros movie wasn’t ‘super’.
I’m always kind of fascinated by storytelling flaws that could actually work as interesting choices if they were intentional. Like this, for example:
Though Marsden has chauffeured an obnoxious CGI animal companion before (see: Hop—or actually, don’t), he has almost zero chemistry with this talking special effect. That could be because Sonic, theoretically sympathetic for his alien-orphan backstory, is actually kind of a selfish prick—when not starting bar fights just for the experience, he’s getting all judgmental about his new companion’s career aspirations. At best, Tom seems to begrudgingly tolerate the hedgehog,I feel like there’s a potentially funny idea in there. Straight-laced regular dude gets roped into a quest with a wacky CGI creature…and never grows any closer to him. Spends the entire movie barely tolerating the thing, putting up with it for some particular narrative reason, then happily pushing it out the door when the story ends.Sonic: Tom, I know we had our differences when we started this trip.Tom: Still hate you, man.Sonic: But more than all the gold rings I’ve collected -Tom: Any one of which could have paid my mortgage, by the way.Sonic: What I’ll really treasure is the friendship we’ve built along the way.*Tom stares at Sonic with undisguised contempt, slams the passenger side door, drives away with tires squealing*
That’s actually a great idea for a short-form story, like a sketch or something. Not sure it works for the main plot of a feature-length movie, though.
Better ending: Chokes Sonic until blackout, hands him over to mad scientist or government, keeps huge bag of gold.Movie tagline:“Behind every great fortune…
there’s a great crime”
How does Marsden keeps getting involved with these kind of movies?
Could’ve just skipped it, or had Apatow direct it.
Saw the movie last week at the Times Square screening. I’m 40 years old with a beautiful fam. I laughed and I even shed a few tears. Sonic deals with feelings of loneliness, isolation, and yearning to live free in the community instead of living in the shadows. While Tom feels he is stuck in his job and yearns to be seen and be a part of something bigger. I related and felt for both characters as someone who has dealt with some of those feelings in the past. It’s a shame that some of these critics seem to have written their reviews before seeing the movie and just filled in the gaps after seeing it. Trust me the movie is fun and some of the stuff that the characters deal with is very relatable. I didn’t expect to see myself in Sonic or Tom but I did and in that way the movie felt very personal to me like if it was made for me. I hope more people feel the same. I loved it and will see it again. Plus if you ever felt like an outcast or misfit and have dealt with loneliness I think this is specifically a great watch.
What’s the point of a review like this, exactly? This is clearly not a film that was intended to be held to the same scrutiny as awards bait or arthouse works; it obviously has no loftier ambitions than being a 2 hour diversion for kids in a cold-ass month that parents can also sit through without having an aneurysm. Why hold it up to any sort of critical rigor?
Because they’re still charging people money to see it, and audiences might appreciate knowing that something is bad before they decide to pay for it.
But what constitutes “bad” here? This is like a restaurant critic giving McDonalds a bad review under the metric they would judge Per Se. Nobody is under the delusion this is going to be a cinematic achievement.
This whole argument is kind of great. “Criticizing this shit movie is as ridiculous as criticizing the shit food at McDonalds! We all know it’s shit, so why do we have to talk about what shit it is?”
It’s bad according to the opinion of A.A. Dowd. If you find Dowd’s subjective (albeit informed) opinion to be useful, then this is worth reading.
Most critics, I find, do try to meet the work on the level to which it aspires. This was intended to be a silly comedy about a blue alien hedgehog from a video game. It was not attempting to delve into the tough and persistent questions about the human condition. But even so, according to Dowd, it largely fails at its intended purpose to entertain with silly comedy.
I don’t agree with the premise that just because something is silly, frivolous, or intended for children, that it is somehow beyond criticism. And with how much discussion this film generated online, to not review it would be a particularly odd omission.
loud enough for everyone in the back: criticism is not simply someone’s opinion.
Lots of restaurant reviewers have given McDonald’s good reviews, in particular their fries.Admittedly I am not the target demographic for this movie. But there is still a range where video game movies can fall. I was interested to see what Dowd thought of this movie.
“Son, I’m glad to take your friends to see this. First we’re going to stop in a…uh…restaurant…so daddy can talk to the nice man behind the counter for half an hour. Maybe 45 minutes.”This review is news you can use.
Because sometimes these sort of movies might actually be good for people seeking something more than babysitting. E.g. The Lego Movie sounded dumb on paper, but when I read multiple good reviews, I made sure to see it. Conversely, The Emoji Movie got terrible reviews and I did not spend my time on it. Detective Pikachu was sort of in the middle, and I have put it on my mental list of movies I might watch on a plane sometime.
It exists just to piss you off, Austin.
This is clearly not a film that was intended to be held to the same scrutiny as awards bait or arthouse works
And this review didn’t hold it to that scrutiny. It held it to the scrutiny of a light children’s movie, and then concluded it failed by that standard. And it’s a standard plenty of light children’s movies manage to meet just fine.Unless you just think “we all knew it would be bad so why bother writing a review” which is… certainly a thought to have on a movie review website I guess.
It’s a superficial, shallow, frustrating way to waste two hours with a cast of deeply annoying characters doing pointless things?
I don’t know. Sounds like they did a pretty faithful adaptation of at least half of the Sonic games.
In other words, this is a nice B movie you can take your kids to for a painless afternoon out. Which means, in AV Clubland, it’s a rotten movie which merits nothing but our contempt, and all the masters (and producers) must be burned.
Marsden really needs a new agent. 30 Rock and Enchanted are essentially his only actually good roles in good material. He does have both Mrs. America and The Stand coming up soon, though, and everybody seems to root for him.I can guess why he got this one, though, and yes it is about Hop: Hop made over $100MM in a spring release, they are looking for that maggik. Another footnote: he did a movie with Claire Danes that only made $3,000. Oy. It was called “As Cool As I Am” yet did not feature the Dar Williams song at all, that sucks but she’s better off.
Yeah, it’s really not that hard to see why he took this one (FWIW, I enjoyed it; some rocky stretches but enough giggles and Easter Eggs to please the packed crowd I saw it with); he’s not exactly an A-list guy on his own, but here, he gets to headline a movie that’s currently tracking for a $40m-$50m opening(and a respectable RT score to boot upon release, so it’s not “Cats”!), these gigs don’t come around all the time for him. So if it means being dumped by a female love interest despite a good, devastatingly handsome guy, or talking to CG animals, ya take those box office coinage to the piggy bank.
yeah, it’s not a bad life, and he’s opposite Tika Sumpter who is definitely making a splash at least among black audiences. I guess nobody ever looked at him and said “that’s the next brando” and he’s been a part of some big cultural things like “Westworld” and “X-Men” (even if he got shafted). Considering he was kind of set up to be a boring pretty boy and he’s done better than that in Enchanted especially it’s not too shabby.
Also, Tika is exceptionally charming and beautiful here, and congrats on playing a character who, unlike everyone else in the movies, does not throw away stupid sexy Marsden (who is the best thing in the movie)
They should’ve just made a movie adaption of Sonic Adventure 1, 2, or both. Essentially like Sonic X, but live action.
yeah but im gonna go see it anyway as a thanks for redoing him after the internet bitched.
If the AV Club thinks it sucks, its probably pretty good. Will check out.
My son is begging me to take him to see this, and now I’m dreading it even more.
When people know they are making a crappy movie, do they immediately call James Marsden?
A negative A.A. Dowd review in this sea of positive reviews really validates my optimism for this movie.
Huh, I’m the opposite, I’d trust a Dowd opinion over most other reviewers. Plus this thing looked awful.
I’m not certain a Metacritic of 46 counts as “a sea of positive reviews.”
I think there could have been a better movie if they’d gone with pairing up the disastrous Sonic cake and its baker from Eddie Murphy’s “Saturday Night Live” appearance last Christmas. (I do think that the cake somehow having human teeth was a reference to the brouhaha over the design of this movie’s Sonic, though I’m likely wrong.)
Well, bad reviews or no my kids really want to see this. So, this is happening this weekend. After the sitting through the Emoji movie, nothing scares me anymore.Good luck and Godspeed fellow parents!
“Really, the whole movie plays like propaganda for the virtues of small-town life. Sharing protagonist duties with this digitally rendered cheerleader is Officer Tom Wachowski (James Marsden), a local cop whose only character flaw is that he’s considering (gasp!) moving to San Francisco, where he might get to solve some real crimes instead of pulling cats out of trees. […] Robotnik considers himself superior to everyone, but he’s especially condescending to the honest, simple folk of Green Hills. ‘Real Americans,’ consider yourself relentlessly pandered to.”I don’t live in San Francisco either, and you can fuck right off.
I dont have any plotline or adaptation ideas, but this not being set in some world based off the “eye-candy” levels from the game is a disappointment. I am much more interested in some unknown sonic world being developed than I am in how Sonic translates to small-town America.
Born at the height of the 16-bit console wars, Sega’s answer to Mario was basically an emblem of kid-courting ’90s attitude: cool but rude like Raphael of the Ninja Turtles, an irreverent trouble-maker with spiky hair like Bart Simpson, an animal mascot with a need for X Games speed.Shit man…you friggin’ nailed that description. I always subconsciously knew that I suppose, but you just broke him down. 10 year old me’s wig just got pulled back a little. And 1000 year old me too.
Last summer’s Detective Pikachu was lousy, too
What? I thought it was fun!
Half-committed Jim Carrey with a mustache? No thanks.
Sure, Sonic in that first trailer looked horrible but if people thought that was the only bad thing in the trailer then they were idiots. The whole premise seemed bad. The cheap gimmick of putting him on earth(to save money). A human sidekick. Robotnik being a US military guy or something. The whole movie looked like shit. I mean that isn’t a surprise. Sonic is a great video game character but he doesn’t really have a deep complicated mythos to mine for a movie. I don’t think anyone was expecting anything but shit from this movie
Googles ‘gimcrack’
Well, in all fairness, “written by committee and directed by indifferent machine” describes 99% of the Hollywood movies out there…
They’ve made over Sonic’s personality, too, in so much as the rodent in the running shoes ever had one.Hedgehogs aren’t rodents, they’re eulipotyphlans, along with shrews, moles, desmans, solenodons, and gymnures.WORST FILM REVIEW EVER
There’s no reason a movie for kids, or a movie that’s meant as light entertainment, can’t also be well-written and not feel like a cynical cash grab. Look at how great the Paddington films are.I’m sure a good version of this Sonic film is possible, but I feel like a completely CG-animated film that’s an expansion of what’s in the video games would be a lot more fun. This looks like “Poochie: The Movie.”
all the SJW crying about appearances and they applaud the makeover for sonic.
Damn, I like Ben Schwartz.
Shoulda rastafied that shit by 10% or so.
I want to see this for Jim Carrey. I’m sure ot will be terrible though
I can appreciate that this Sonic movie is sub-sub-par, but the Detective Pikachu slander cannot stand.It wasn’t high art, but it was cohesive to its own logic, and it put Pokemon in the real world in possibly the best way we can with the technology we have. The animated movies have magical tears that are 100% inconsistent with any logic in the series, so for Detective Pikachu to make a sweet story about a boy, his Pikachu and a rather straight forward villain plot, that is re-watchable by a parent, is a triumph.
I mostly agree with this review, I saw it on an advanced screening. I’m so happy I didn’t pay to see that movie. I enjoyed Detective Pikachu, it was just a fun movie. I found Sonic so childish and poorly written there’s barely a story and whatever story there is it’s extremely stereotypical and predictable. There was a kid loudly moaning before the end of the movie that it was boring and there was too much talking. Jim Carey’s jokes were very mean and unfunny he had a scene were he was allowed to be his awesome self. Worst movie of 2020 for me.
The fact that they made Dowd review this movie is just…weird and mean. Mean to dowd. Mean to the movie. Weird.
Maybe he had a bad week and just needed to beat up on something.
Putting A.A. Dewd on the Sonic review? That’s just cruel.
what a shite review. its a movie based on Sonic the hedgehog.What were you expecting a Parasite level type film??take it for what the film is FFS.
I mean, the original trailer looked awful even if you didn’t pay attention to the creepy way they made Sonic look.
It just seemed like a really bad re-tread of an 80s movie idea but without any modern spice added to it.
I like Kotaku’s review much more.
Yeah, at least that one’s from the perspective of someone who played Sonic growing up and went into this movie trying to enjoy it on its own merits despite the disparity between this and the video games, which is a far more valuable opinion to me than this review, which just feels like it was written by Jay Sherman having a shitty week.
I love Benny Schwaz so much I was hoping this would somehow be great. I hope it opens up a lot of opportunities for him anyway because he’s a wonderful improviser and a delightful person.
That movie is cool
The description of Sonic’s personality in this review pretty perfectly describes his actual personality in the games, TV Shows, etc where he has one, as opposed to just being a sprite with a slightly sassy intro cinematic. But the movie is bad because its version of Sonic doesn’t line up with the one Dowd made up so he could criticise it. Classy as ever, Dowd.
Saw it. Enjoyed it. Easily a C+. Dowd loves to have a bad time.
I can’t help but think that Usain Bolt should have been tapped to at least be a consultant for this character, his brand of cockiness that fits his greatness is pretty enjoyable.
Say what you will, but I’m convinced it will still be the greatest movie ever made about a hedgehog.
I got to “Last summer’s Detective Pikachu was lousy, too,” and then realized the author just…doesn’t like things.I’ll still watch Sonic when it comes out on blu ray or streaming, it deserves that much.
They should of made him look like Ron Jeremy.
We complained. They fixed it. Visual effects company went out of business. Go see the movie. You’ve paid to see worse.
Still looks like fun, I’m still going to see it. Who would’ve thought, AV Club hates it, like they hate basically everything else that comes out ever. Most of the other reviews I’ve read from other sites I go to for reviews were far more leveled, I’m 100% confident it’s not anywhere near this bad.
I knew this review was retarded when I read the words “Last summer’s Detective Pikachu was lousy, too”. Don’t chastise a movie that’s not meant for you, dumbass.
It’s enjoyable enough. It made bank this weekend on that fact. There are definitely movies more deserving of a D+ than this little guy.
Oh man I didn’t think this was amazing but definitely better than D+.