Sonic: It's as basic as it gets

Don’t waste your money on this one, I guarantee you’ve seen it before.

A review by Write Owl

The Sonic the Hedgehog movie is as basic as any “cartoon character in the real world” sort of movie goes. It follows the same generic plot of the protagonist being lost or in need of help finding a way home or flying away from Earth. There’s usually another character, possibly a child but in this instance, a town cop helping the protagonist find their way home. Sonic the Hedgehog, the film, has so

me laughs here and there - but ultimately it isn’t enough to justify the £8.35 admission. That was even with my student discount. I pity the people paying £10 or more to see this film. Within the story, Sonic’s speed ability is seen as a gift that must be hidden from others. In order to be safe, he was sent to earth. If he gets found out he must retreat to another planet - a Mushroom Planet that has no life. Just mushrooms. Sonic is the kind of character who is on the run, because of this he is left alone with no friends - until he meets the town cop. This is a device they tried to use to make the film different, but as a result all characters make life-long best friends in stories like these. We’ve seen it in Smurfs. We’ve seen it in Earth to Echo. And now we’re seeing it again in Sonic. There’s absolutely nothing new

here - just the same brain-dead story with different characters. Since the animators of Sonic did take the time to return Sonic to his creation stage because his first design was horrendous. Possessing what the internet likes to describe as an ‘Uncanny Valley’ appearance. You would think they had high hopes for this movie’s success. Unlike what happened with the 1993 Mario Bros. movie… but we don’t talk about that (because that was awful.) This is why it would have been believed that this movie had something new to bring to the table. It didn’t. They took a brilliant idea - and they threw it into a vortex of never-ending clichés. It does have gorgeous cinematic scenes that are pleasing to the eyes, and makes you think ‘wow.’ Unfortunately, that isn’t enough to hold up the movie, since it has such a simplistic story that gives you nothing to look forward to or hope for. It leaves you feeling betrayed. How could they bother to re-design Sonic, and not realise how basic the entire story is?

Who was going to tell them that just because something looks nice, doesn’t mean its content is good? Perhaps they needed us to advise them as we did with their first model of Sonic. But it should be obvious that we wanted something new, something that made us think ‘wow never seen that before.’ It wasn’t as if the entire plot needed to be different, but something needed to be new and at the moment nothing is. All in all, it is worth the watch because of its art and slight giggles here and there. But don’t go in with high expectations, because you’ve seen it before.