Sonic the Hedgehog 2: Haven’t we suffered enough?

One might reasonably imagine that with all the current troubles in the world, no one would be malicious enough to launch a second Sonic the Hedgehog film upon us unsuspecting masses. And yet here we are.

As this unlovely sequel opens – with few concessions to those who failed to keep up with the plot of the cerebrally challenged original – Sonic is just a regular American kid (?), determined to fashion himself as a Batman-inspired, pointier superhero, and living with his adoptive parents Tom (Marsten) and Maddie (Sumpter) in Green Hills, Montana. When his wholesome family take off for Hawaii, Sonic is visited by canonical Sega chum Tails (O’Shaughnessey, who voices Tails in the video game), who warns the prickly critter that arch-enemy Dr Ivo “Eggman” Robotnik (Carrey) has escaped the mushroom planet and he’s already here. And this time, he has intergalactic anteater warrior Knuckles (Elba) by his side.

Back in Hawaii, the amiable Marsden stars in the kind of interrupted wedding comedy that, at the turn of the millennium, might have starred James Marsden. He tries (and fails) to not ruin the nuptials of his sister-in-law Rachel (Rothwell) in what looks and feels like an entirely different film to the one in which Jim Carrey is throwing the kind of big Carrey-ish shapes that once dominated the cinematic landscape.

Both actors are ill-served by a script that carps on about finding your moment or some such. Can’t a hedgehog go on a quest to find a magic master emerald without this constant haranguing? Couldn’t we have a Sonic movie that doesn’t feature the phrase “I love you, Sonic”? Worse still, there’s the run time. Isn’t Sonic supposed to be speedy?