Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is speeding into theaters, and fans will be happy to know it’s the best-reviewed Sonic movie yet – and it’s not even close. Sonic (Ben Schwartz), Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey), and Knuckles (Idris Elba) must team up again with the help of their human friends, Tom and Maddie (James Marsden and Tika Sumpter) when a powerful new adversary, Shadow (Keanu Reeves) threatens them. This time, the danger is so great that they have to turn to unlikely allies for help: Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey) and Agent Stone (Lee Majdoub), in the strangest partnership yet.
Reviews for the third Sonic movie have been great, with critics giving special praise to Keanu Reeves’ villain, Shadow, and Jim Carrey’s absolutely unhinged performance as Dr. Ivo Robotnik and his own grandfather, Gerald Robotnik.
“Carrey is the life of the party here, and it’s when he shows up that everything gets better — and the kids really start laughing and getting into it, because as much as they loved and cheered the various game characters and apparent Easter egg tasks and visuals from the game itself, the most engaged they seemed in the movie itself and the story was every time Carrey was on screen. The laughs were louder, smiles bigger — and the silences longer, because when Carrey is on screen in both roles (I won’t spoil plot points, but you need to know he’s multiple characters because more of him is what makes this movie work) doing something or having a family moment, the audience was engaged and even the children cared to whatever extent you can about such characters in such situations.”
“There is a lot of physical comedy for both Gerald and Ivo. To say that I was laughing until my cheeks hurt is an understatement. Carrey is so good at involving his entire body in his art, and he will never, ever, shy away from something that makes the gag that much funnier. With him taking on two characters in Sonic 3, the comedy is brought to a whole new level.”
“Reeve’s Shadow is the emotional core of Sonic 3. He’s who Sonic would have become without his family and, ultimately, a warning for those looking to move through life on vengeance alone. To be honest, in a world as terrible as the one we live in now, teaching kids to deal with grief and loss in such an explicit way hits beyond just the video game property of it all.”
“What becomes immediately clear is that Shadow is quite possibly one of the coolest characters in recent children’s cinema, not just because of his intense brooding — he’s moody and adolescent on the surface, but reveals meaningful depth — but because he’s so much goddamn fun to watch. The way he’s animated and lit (sometime with flame) makes him feel like a living, breathing part of the environment, and he can also extend his abilities to objects by electrifying them, resulting in Sonic having to chase him down on a super-swift bike that Shadow Akira-slides up the side of a building. Tom Cruise, eat your heart out (though not before you admire the movie’s many Mission: Impossible homages in its heist-heavy final act).”
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