Sonic 3 is a speedrun through the franchise scrapyard, yet it works

Though the three Sonic the Hedgehog movies have charms of their own, they’ve also clearly benefited from a confluence of lucky breaks in order to reach their rarefied beloved-franchise status. The generally poor track record of previous video game adaptations; the release of the first movie before COVID closed theaters and the second one not long after movie-going started to return to normal; genre fan weariness with the sheer volume of Marvel continuity; the Sonic-nostalgic ’90s kids starting to have kids of their own: All of this has combined to overcome the fact that the Sonic movies tend to be sloppy, motormouthed, half-nonsensical affairs. (Weirdly, this might make Sonic the video-game-movie equivalent of Venom. They’re both ’90s icons! It tracks!)

The series may actually be subject to a bizarre formula: The looser and more disparate the parts of a Sonic movie are, the better the whole somehow holds together. At least that would explain why Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is, improbably, the best of the lot so far. 

Looking at it on paper, Sonic 3 depends on a series of ill-advised tonal swings. On one hand, the newly formed team of CG-animated aliens Sonic (Ben Schwartz), Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey), and Knuckles (Idris Elba) tees up some more half-assed, Saturday-morning-ready lessons about the importance of teamwork when they’re recruited by a shadowy government agency for a world-saving mission. On the other hand, their dangerous opponent is Shadow (Keanu Reeves), essentially a dark version of Sonic, who has recently awakened from a 50-year stasis, ready to channel his grief and rage over the loss of a loved one into the full destruction of planet Earth. Then, on an inexplicable third hand, there is Jim Carrey, returning as the villainous Dr. Robotnik and also debuting Robotnik’s flinty grandfather Gerald, acting like two maniacs for the price of one.  

How is it that Carrey has never pulled an Eddie Murphy and played off of an effects-duplicated version himself before now? Usually, his self-duets take place within a single, elastic body, whether through his transformation in The Mask or the dueling selves in Liar Liar and Me, Myself and Irene. Robotnik has never been as well-defined as a classic Carrey character, and he remains more or less The Riddler Lite in Sonic 3. But boy, does Carrey work hard while rarely appearing opposite any other flesh-and-blood actors, from warbling “The Way We Were” and mugging to the tune of “Firestarter,” to cavorting with his elderly self in a series of virtual-reality bonding exercises, to indulging in an extended victory dance after defeating a roomful of security lasers. The younger Robotnik actually works with the good guys for large chunks of the film, but most of the time, Carrey is off to the side, performing a gloriously deranged one-man, two-character musical.

This should clash jarringly with the utter sincerity Reeves brings to Shadow, the alien hedgehog who is an avatar of lonely, hollowed-out fury while also managing to look cute as a button. (Even his design is a tonal clash.) As usual, the latest Sonic movie indulges in some of the cheapest pathos three screenwriters can buy, putting some characters in repeated and transparently phony peril, while creating others for the sole purpose of juicing up some tragic backstory. Yet damned if Reeves doesn’t make Shadow a weirdly likable little ball of pain at the center of it all, as he seethes, punches, and, at one point, does the Akira motorcycle slide up the side of a Tokyo skyscraper. His is basically a more extreme version of Knuckles’ journey in the previous movie, and experienced grown-ups may suspect that the Sonic series will maintain a foe-conversion rate somewhere close to My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (a complimentary comparison, to be clear). 

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is still a speedrun through the franchise scrapyard. There’s some abbreviated Marvel-style mythology (including, yes, multiple credits scenes), a discount Mission: Impossible break-in sequence that makes an obvious Tom Cruise joke, and all of those third-tier DreamWorks cartoon wisecracks that issue from Sonic himself. James Marsden and Tika Sumpter, as the human guardians of Sonic and company, still have thankless jobs to do, and the way the movie needlessly incorporates additional past human cast members is confusing at best. For that matter, what newcomer Krysten Ritter is doing in this movie seems unclear, even (or especially) to the filmmakers. But director Jeff Fowler, who also made the first two movies, has further streamlined the pacing, and the film flies by in a silly, agreeable blur.

Kids probably deserve a better faux-superhero franchise; Carrey certainly does. But sometimes junky kids’ movies turn out pretty fun in spite of themselves. That’s just another run of Sonic’s superior luck.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 hits theaters on Dec. 20.