Sonic the Hedgehog arrived in theaters on February 14, 2020, carrying a tagline that promised “a whole new speed of hero.” What it delivers instead is a 99-minute action-comedy that never quite decides what it wants to be. Jeff Fowler directs in his feature debut, working from a script by Pat Casey and Josh Miller. The film stars James Marsden as small-town sheriff Tom Wachowski, Ben Schwartz as the voice of Sonic, and Jim Carrey as the villainous Dr. Robotnik.
Trailer, via Paramount Pictures.
From Green Hills to San Francisco
The plot moves fast and loose. Sonic is an anthropomorphic blue hedgehog who can run at supersonic speed. An echidna tribe ambushes him for his power, and his guardian, an owl named Longclaw, gives him a bag of golden rings that open portals to distant locations. She sends him to Earth and stays behind to hold off the echidnas, sacrificing herself. Ten years later, Sonic lives secretly in a forest cave near Green Hills, Montana, watching Tom and his wife Maddie from a distance. He idolizes them, unaware the couple plans to move to San Francisco for Tom’s new job with the police department.
One lonely night, Sonic plays baseball by himself. Running to clear his head, he accidentally triggers an electromagnetic pulse that blacks out the Pacific Northwest. The Department of Defense calls in Dr. Robotnik. Sonic flees, hides in the Wachowskis’ shed, and gets tranquilized by Tom. The accident opens a portal to San Francisco and sends his rings through it. From there, it is a race across the globe.
Jim Carrey and the Cast Around Him
Carrey plays Robotnik with the manic energy the role demands, and he is the most alive thing in the movie. Marsden is likable and grounded as Tom, and Tika Sumpter does what she can as Maddie. Natasha Rothwell, Adam Pally, and Neal McDonough fill out the supporting cast. Schwartz voices Sonic with a youthful eagerness that fits the character’s longing for friendship.
The production history hangs over all of it. Development began in the 1990s but stalled until Sony Pictures acquired the rights in 2013. Fowler was hired in 2016, and Paramount Pictures picked up the project in 2017 after Sony put it in turnaround. Most of the cast signed on by August 2018. Principal photography ran between September and October that year in Vancouver and on Vancouver Island, with a release date set for November 8, 2019. That date did not hold.
The Redesign That Moved the Release
The first trailer drew negative reaction. Sonic appeared to look like a real hedgehog, and audiences rejected it. Paramount delayed the film by three months to redesign Sonic to more resemble his look in the video games. The fix worked on a surface level, but it also cost the film its original slot and left the finished product feeling like a compromise.
A whole new speed of hero.
That tagline is doing more work than the movie does. Sonic the Hedgehog premiered at the Paramount Pictures studio lot on January 25, 2020, opened in the United States on February 14, and reached Japan on June 26. It received mixed reviews and set a record for the biggest opening for a video game adaptation. That record says more about the low bar for the genre than about this film’s quality.
The bones of something better are here. The friendship between Sonic and Tom has real warmth, and Carrey’s Robotnik is worth the ticket. But the plot races from set piece to set piece without earning its emotional beats, and the mushroom planet gag runs out of steam fast. The redesign delay was the right call, yet it could not fix a script that treats its own story as an afterthought. This is a movie built to launch a franchise, not to stand on its own. It got the franchise. It did not get the film.
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