SONIC THE HEDGEHOG: Animal Control

Director: Jeff Fowler
Writers: Pat Casey, Josh Miller
Cast: Jim Carrey, Ben Schwartz, James Marsden, Lee Majdoub, Tika Sumpter, Natasha Rothwell
Runtime (lol): 99 mins.
2020

Sonic the Hedgehog may have suffered the most embarrassing CGI redesign debacle since Superman's smooth upper lip. It may be tone deaf enough to make its protagonist a white cop with a heart of gold, and it may double down on that tone deafness by giving him a fawning one-dimensional Black wife. It may triple down on its racism by having a Black child whose only role is to give Sonic his red Air Jordan-esque sneakers, and an angry Black woman whose only role is to faint, get tied up, complain, and pee herself. It may be serially incapable of following character arcs to completion. It may contain jokes that became outdated the moment they were conceived. It may have action that oscillates between unsatisfying and lame. It may ramp up to one of the least impressive versions of that now-tired trope: portal-based CGI chase climax. It may feature a protagonist that never feels like he is in the same room as the other protagonist. It may begin with a maternal owl being killed by natives for reasons I still don't understand. It may feature not one, but two scenes of Sonic the Hedgehog flossing (the dance, not the painful mouth string).

But it does have one thing. And that one thing goes great lengths to elevate this movie from "bad" to "all righty then."

Jim Carrey.


Jim Carrey plays the villain in what shall henceforth be referred to as The Dr. Robotnik Movie. Robotnik is an extragovernmental egomaniacal supergenius who verbally abuses everyone around him of lesser intellect-- so, everyone. He becomes fixated on Sonic as an anomaly of the natural order. He pursues him using an armory of advanced technology and the loyal assistance of Agent Stone (Lee Majdoub, second best in show), with whom he shares what is clearly a loving dom/sub relationship.

All that adds up to a stock mad scientist character. Seldom have I seen a stock character played with such verve. From the moment he descends his hydraulic truck staircase to walk onscreen, Jim Carrey owns the movie. He eviscerates everybody he comes across, and everything they stand for. It's a scorched earth performance, largely improvised from what I understand.

He's using the classic Jim Carrey toolset: pulling faces, exaggerating gestures, suddenly dropping his voice an octave for comedic effect. Yet, there is something different about this older, wizened Carrey. The Dr. Robotnik Movie represents his return to film after a near half decade hiatus, during which he spoke openly about his nihilism and depression. This Jim Carrey is an old pro, and his signature performance quirks are sharper, more pointed and precise than ever. In many of Carrey's comedic roles his tactic has been to go big, go bigger, go even bigger than that. We see that here, especially in the mandatory kids' movie dance break scene (the only truly joyful version of it that I can remember). Yet he is constantly modulating for maximum effect. He has moments that blast like a pipe bomb, and moments that slice like a scalpel, with everything in between.

If they do go ahead with the Academy Awards, 2020 is going to have a bizarrely limited crop of candidates. I am not joking when I say that Jim Carrey deserves a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his work in The Dr. Robotnik Movie.

2 / 5  BLOBS