REVIEW:
It’s not as if the Sonic the Hedgehog movies were ever anything great, but this third film in the series falls far short of the other two. The first movie kept things simple. Other than a brief intro in another world (with Sonic’s caregiver Long Claw,) that movie was pretty grounded. It stayed on earth and dealt with the family unit. The second movie elaborated, added new characters, but still kept things relatable. With the third movie, things are a bit all over the place.
First off, there are two new characters here… Shadow and Dr Robotnick’s father, Gerald Robotnick (also played by Jim Carrey.) Shadow is the latest new creature character villain, like Knuckles was in the last movie. And he’s actually playing a pretty similar part, in that he teams up with the human bad guys and is out for vengeance in order to appease something that was done to him. He’s voiced by Keanu Reeves here, and Reeves is a nice, welcome addition, but that still doesn’t change the fact that all this has been done before… in the last movie.
We also got two new characters in that film (Knuckles and Tails,) but they were on different sides with one being good and the other bad, so it felt different than the two new villains we get here. And regarding thst second one, Gerald Robotnick, he’s pretty dumb. Let’s be honest. When the movie stops for a dance number that’s just Jim Carrey and Jim Carrey spinning each other around on a dance floor, you know the movie has lost the will to be creative, and is just trying to pander to kids.
Now there are done coo things in this, such as a Scorpion-like creature who appears at the end. But this one really deviates from the others quite a bit, and not in a good way. Here’s an example… two of the important side characters from the first and second movie, who each had their own stories going in those other films, have but one quick scene each… a cameo, in this movie. The last time I saw anything like that, where a third movie in a series completely forgot important characters from the other two, was Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, where Luis and his band of crooks (and his fast-talking story-telling recurring sketch,) were completely left out. And we all know how that movie turned out. This third Sonic movie was also forgets its roots, and it’s not very good as a result.