“Sonic 3” Review

I recall stormy days in the mountains at a friend’s house. The sky was a swirl of dark gray and you could hardly see outside because of all the snow that was falling. We were shut in for days in between sledding sessions, braving the storm outside when the mood struck us and living on a diet of grilled cheese sandwiches and Life Savers from the old Christmas books they used to come in.

I recall seeing a girl of about twelve, sitting on a sled that looked like it was at least fifty years old. Her blades sparked as she blazed down the street, a blur of pink flying by us at warp speed. Suddenly my plastic saucer didn’t seem too cool.

Inside, we callused our thumbs playing Sonic the Hedgehog on Sega Genesis. It was the game that came with the console, replacing Altered Beast with something none of us had ever seen: a blue hedgehog speeding through a brightly lit forest and battling the villainous, egg-shaped, and mustached maniac obsessed with capturing powerful ancient artifacts called Chaos Emeralds. We loved it. I eventually got the game for my own console and played it for countless hours as a tween.

After that, I didn’t think about Sonic for thirty years. Then I had a son.

When he was younger, I bought him Sonic comic books from the local funny book store even before he knew how to read. There’s an interesting story regarding the rights to the Sonic characters that can be found here: https://www.cbr.com/rights-to-the-sonic-the-hedgehog-archie-characters/

Anyway, I would read them to him before he was able to, and kind of summarize the dialogue as I went along to simplify the story. He liked the games, too, and we would play the newer Sonic games on the iPad.

The bottom line is this with the Sonic movies:

The first one was pretty grounded in reality. It’s almost like when the Dolph Lundgren He-Man movie from the 80s took the characters from Eternia and put them in New York. As a kid, we wanted to see the sparkling castles of the fantastic world of Masters of the Universe, not Ivan Drago shuffling through the dirty, dark streets of some city on Earth. Maybe it’s a budget thing, but the world of Sonic should be as fantastic as it gets. The second one embraced this idea more by adding some colorful characters and making the story more fantastic. The third one blew the roof off.

Jim Carey is always great as the megalomaniacal Dr. Robotnik. And in this one, we get two of him. I won’t spoil it. The fan service is done right, with callbacks to the video game while not hitting the viewer over the head with it. And, perhaps most importantly, my son enjoyed it.

He called it a 9.8 out of 10.

Logan’s review: “I really like the part where Knuckles says, ‘You do look like a Pokemon. Pika Pika!’ I also think it’s very funny and worth the money to go watch it in theaters.”

Well, there ya’ have it.

TMR’s score: 4/5

TM Rush