Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022)
For years "video game movie" was basically a warning label, shorthand for something cynical and half-watchable. You knew what you were getting: a production that understood the intellectual property well enough to put the right colours on screen, but had no real feel for why anyone loved the source material in the first place. The first thing that strikes you about the Sonic films is how quietly, almost stubbornly, they have shrugged that reputation off.
This second one, again directed by Jeff Fowler, is every bit as much fun as its predecessor, and I say that as someone who was genuinely surprised by how much I enjoyed Sonic the Hedgehog (2020). It gets the thing the games always had and most adaptations fumble: speed, colour, and a sense of play. Not play in the vague, hand-wavy sense that studio marketing departments love, but actual playfulness baked into the texture of the thing. Even a small touch like Dr Robotnik's egg-shaped little flying machine, lifted straight out of the games, had me grinning like the kid who used to play them on a Saturday morning with a bowl of cereal going cold beside me.
The new arrivals earn their keep. Idris Elba brings a lovely deadpan heft to Knuckles, treating every line with the kind of committed seriousness that makes the comedy land harder than it would if he were winking at the audience. Colleen O'Shaughnessy's Tails is sweet without tipping into cloying, which is a harder balance to strike than it sounds. The trio bounce off one another exactly as they should, and when the film lets them off the leash the action set-pieces take flight. The best of them carry the same giddy, time-bending wit as Quicksilver's showstoppers in the later X-Men films, and from me that is high praise.
Then there is Jim Carrey, who treats Robotnik as a personal licence to go gloriously, rubber-faced big. He is having the time of his life up there and it is completely infectious. There is a version of this role that is irritating, that tips over into noise, but Carrey walks the line with the instinct of someone who has been doing this for thirty-odd years. Every scene he is in has an extra volt running through it.
If there is a drag, it is the one that nagged at the first film as well: the human subplot. Every time the story wanders off to check in on James Marsden and his family, the air goes out of the room and you sit there willing it back to the blue blur. It is a familiar flaw and, more frustratingly, an avoidable one. Nobody bought a ticket to spend ten minutes at a wedding reception. The film knows where its energy lives; it just occasionally forgets to stay there.
But here is the thing. When a film delivers this reliably on what its audience actually showed up for, I can forgive the odd lull. The ratio is well in its favour. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is a bright, good-hearted blast that matches its predecessor step for step, and if you want to see what this kind of blockbuster animation can do when the filmmakers genuinely give a damn, I would also point you towards Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) as the ceiling of the genre right now.
Three and a half stars, and I will absolutely be there for the third.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2022 | Watched: 2026-08-13
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Paramount+ Amazon Channel
Rent: JustWatch TV · Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Netflix · Paramount Plus Premium · Paramount Plus Essential · Philo
Rent: JustWatch TV · Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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