Sonic the Hedgehog 2

A significant downgrade from the already-tedious original film, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 follows the title character (Ben Schwartz) as he’s forced to once again battle Jim Carrey’s Dr. Robotnik – with the villainous figure receiving help from a powerful new sidekick named Knuckles (Idris Elba). Filmmaker Jeff Fowler, armed with a screenplay by Pat Casey, Josh Miller, and John Whittington, delivers a hopelessly bloated sequel that does, for the majority of its wildly overlong running time (122 minutes!), contain little in the way of appealing, entertaining attributes – with the arms-length atmosphere perpetuated by a continuing reliance on over-the-top and entirely uninvolving (and computer-effects-heavy) set-pieces. It goes without saying, then, that the picture’s few appealing elements, including (and especially) Carrey’s agreeably larger-than-life turn as the movie’s antagonist, are rendered moot by the pervasively frenetic atmosphere, and although there are admittedly a very small handful of relatively entertaining sequences sprinkled throughout, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 builds towards an action-packed and absolutely endless final third that ensures the whole thing concludes on just about as underwhelming and interminable a note as one could possibly envision – with the end result a seriously lackluster video-game adaptation that ranks among the worst that the genre has to offer.

* out of ****