Movie Review: Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)

Video games have historically had a bad time at the movies. For whatever reason, the creative minds of Hollywood have continually struggled to successfully adapt popular video games to film. With the exception of a few mildly well-received anomalies like last year's Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, big-screen adaptations of video games are invariably by fans and critics alike. Enter Sonic the Hedgehog, a film whose initial trailer was so poorly received by fans that Paramount opted to delay the film's release by three months in an effort to overhaul the title character's design. Everything seemed to be stacked against this film, but it miraculously toes the line, reaching a bare minimum of quality that can almost be considered a success. Relatively speaking, anyway.

The film gets off to a rocky start, opening with the dreaded freeze-frame "I bet you're wondering how I got in this situation" in media res beginning. Villainous Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey) and his army of drones are chasing Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz) through the streets of San Francisco, but in true clichéd fashion, the story rewinds to an earlier point in time to attempt to explain how our titular hedgehog has gotten himself into this predicament. Whether or not you're familiar with the Sonic franchise, the opening bit of backstory doesn't make a lick of sense. Baby Sonic lives a mostly peaceful existence in an alternate world of some sort. Too bad a bunch of masked tribesmen are after him for unknown reasons that will immediately become irrelevant two minutes later. Sonic's caretaker hands the hedgehog a bag of magic rings that can transport him to other worlds, then whisks Sonic off through a ring-portal, stranding him on earth for his own safety.

Ten years later, we find Sherriff Tom Wachowski (James Marsden), living a humdrum life in the rural town of Green Hills, Montana. Unbeknownst to him, Sonic has been living in the woods outside of town for the past decade, entertaining himself with comic books (The Flash, naturally), one-man games of baseball, and by spying on the townsfolk from afar. One night, Sonic's loneliness gets the best of him, sending him into frustrated electrical super-speed overdrive, which causes a massive blackout that attracts the attention of the US government. Enter Carrey's Robotnik, a mad scientist sent in to handle the potential threat in Montana. For better or worse, Carrey reaches a level of manic mugging here that he hasn't hit since 2004's A Series of Unfortunate Events. Your personal tolerance for Carrey's cartoonishness will likely make or break the movie.

Past the lengthy setup, Sonic the Hedgehog falls into a formulaic groove. There isn't a plot beat or moment of character development that can't be seen coming from ten miles away. Sherriff Tom encounters Sonic, freaks out, but then eventually decides to protect Sonic from Robotnik's clutches. Sonic accidentally teleports his bag of rings to the top of a San Francisco skyscraper, so he and Wachowski have to team up to retrieve them. Why Sonic can't just use a map and his speed to retrieve the rings in a matter of minutes is brushed aside with the flimsiest of reasons. The movie wants a road trip to happen, so a road trip happens.

If you've ever seen any kind of road trip movie, there won't be anything you haven't seen before in Sonic the Hedgehog. There are lengthy conversation scenes in Wachowski's SUV, a scene where the duo stop at a biker bar and get into a barfight (which shamelessly apes the slow-mo fight scene from X-Men: Days of Future Past), and even more conversation scenes when Sonic and Wachowski stop for the night in a motel. There's a fart joke, a few halfhearted attempts at crafting a believable bond between Sonic and his human costar, a mildly perilous chase scene, and a myriad of other plot beats that will be all too familiar to adults or any child who has seen more than three movies. The movie coasts through its climax without much excitement, but at least manages to generate some mild interest with its two post-credits scenes that tease a sequel that might not be as bland as the first film.

The story of Sonic the Hedgehog doesn't do the film any favors. It's generic to a fault, and will likely only appeal to children and the hardest of diehard Sonic fans. However, the cast puts enough effort into the proceedings to elevate this ever so slightly out of tedium. Schwartz provides the right amount rad, rebellious attitude that has made Sonic such an enduring pop culture icon. Marsden works well as the straight man because his generic good looks and charm don't outshine Sonic's antics. And as previously mentioned, Carrey's energetic performance will amuse those who enjoy his shtick. The beleaguered animation staff deserves credit, too. Within the span of months, they overhauled the uncanny, monstrous original design for Sonic and replaced it with one that's far less unpleasant to look at. I almost would rather see the version with the nightmarish original Sonic, if only because that would break up the monotony of the tepid story, but the animators still deserve praise for their last-minute damage control.

Sonic the Hedgehog isn't great, and depending on your attitude towards cutesy family movies, it may even be considered bad. But, given the history of truly atrocious video game movies, this is comparatively a success. It might not be as visually inspired as the baffling Super Mario Bros., but it's also not as inaccurate to the source material and narratively incoherent as Super Mario Bros.. A bland but respectful water-cracker adaptation of Sonic is arguably better than one with a flagrant disregard for anything appealing about the series. It's a step in the right direction, at least. With this film and Detective Pikachu before it, we're hopefully reaching a baseline of middling quality that can serve as the benchmark for other, better video game movies in the future.

Movie Review: Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)

I'm generally of the opinion that DC's superhero movies are more interesting than Marvel. Unlike Marvel, which offers a uniform standard of quality, you never know what you're going to get when you walk into a DC movie. With DC, every film is a gamble, and Birds of Prey is a losing hand. It's

The film is a spinoff of 2016's Suicide Squad, focusing on Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), the psychiatrist turned psycho killer. Harley is usually known as the Joker's partner in crime, but as the film's obnoxiously long subtitle suggests, she's out of the shadow of her famous beau for this outing. The film opens with a cutesy animated segment where Harley recaps her life up until her unceremonious breakup with the Joker. Harley's narration continues throughout the movie, so you'd better hope you like or at least tolerate her exaggerated New Yorker accent.

In the wake of her nasty breakup, Harley goes through the stereotypical motions: crying, binge drinking, partying, eating junk food, cutting her hair, buying a pet hyena, and so on.  The film lurches around with lots of time skips and flashbacks as Harley narrates her scattershot recollection of events but eventually gets around to the point. Since she's no longer under the protection of her powerful boyfriend, Harley is now the target of a large number of criminals looking to get revenge for the myriad ways she's screwed people over. There's even a handy freeze-frame whenever a new character is introduced, complete with the person's name and their grievance against Harley.

In particular, she finds herself in the crosshairs of Roman Sionis (Ewan MacGregor) and Victor Zsasz (Chris Messina), a prominent Gotham crime boss and his sadistic henchman. The two men are somewhat offensively coded as gay, like something out of a dated 90s thriller. More importantly, they want Harley dead for numerous reasons. Sionis also wants to get ahold of a diamond, one etched with the codes to a deceased crime family's Swiss bank accounts. In exchange for sparing her life, Sionis sends Harley to fetch the diamond, which has been stolen (and swallowed) by a young pickpocket, Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco). However, Harley has a change of heart once she apprehends Cain, and decides to protect her new friend from Sionis and his hordes of hired goons.

In comparison to its predecessor, Birds of Prey is mostly a step up. Whereas Suicide Squad was hastily retrofitted into a jokey affair after the success of Deadpool, this film's sense of humor feels more fleshed out. Of course, if you don't care for the cheeky narration and gruesome slapstick of the Deadpool movies, you won't get a lot out of Birds of Prey. Unfortunately, like Suicide Squad, the story here is equally messy. The aforementioned diamond-retrieving plot, the eventual focus of the film, doesn't come into play until roughly halfway through the film. The preceding half is dedicated to helter-skelter character introductions and a ricocheting series of flashbacks time jumps. It's not a difficult movie to follow, but the leaps in time deflate a lot of the momentum the film has going for it.

This certainly isn't the worst film DC has produced so far since embarking on its mission to create a cinematic universe similar to Marvel, but it's not a success. Like last year's Joker, this movie struggles because it focuses on a character who normally serves only a supporting role. Harley just isn't that compelling of a character in the absence of Batman, the Joker, or even her gal-pal, Poison Ivy. The closest she comes to camaraderie in this is her big sister/little sister relationship with Cain, but the duo doesn't have the necessary chemistry to pull that off. And if it seems like I've neglected to mention the titular Birds of Prey, that's because they barely figure into the film. The Birds feel like an afterthought, extra characters that were thrown in to flesh out an otherwise scant solo vehicle for Harley Quinn. Robbie is at least fully committed to the role of Harley Quinn, but the character itself just isn't that compelling.

Movie Review: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

Originally published 30 July 2018 on Odyssey at https://www.theodysseyonline.com/jurassic-world-fallen-kingdom-2583771729

"Occasional dino thrills in this odd, goofy sequel."

"Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" is the follow-up to the "Jurassic Park" soft reboot "Jurassic World", and the fifth entry overall in the "Jurassic Park" series. Confused? That is perfectly fine, because the movie is, too. "Fallen Kingdom" cannot decide what movie it wants to be, so it presents itself as two movies for the price of one. It will ultimately depend on personal preference which half of the film you prefer, if at all, but I preferred the oddball second half far more than the first.

"Fallen Kingdom" picks up a few years after the events of the previous film. Isla Nublar, home to the resurrected dinosaurs, just so happens to be the site of an active volcano that is about to erupt. Animal rights activists want government intervention to save these endangered species, while others (specifically Jeff Goldblum, in what amounts to a begrudging cameo) insist the dinosaurs should be left to die since their very existence is unnatural. Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), the dino-loving heroine of the previous film is approached by a representative of the heretofore unmentioned business partner of John Hammond, the crazy rich guy behind the original Jurassic Park. The slick investor-bro representative offers Claire a chance to rescue some of the reptiles from the island since the government refuses to intervene. One brief scene of recruiting Owen (Chris Pratt) the raptor trainer later, and the two protagonists (plus two deliriously unfunny comic relief sidekicks) once again find themselves knee-deep in dinosaur action.

The film often feels like a retread of "The Lost World", particularly the dinosaur rescue mission. Just like in that film, the operatives hired to assist the heroes with rescuing the big lizards have ulterior motives. There is the requisite betrayal as the heroes realize the rescue mission is profit-minded rather than altruistic. The island erupts, there are action scenes of fleeing from lava, a daring escape onto the bad guys' ship, and so on and so forth. If nothing else, these scenes are shot competently, sometimes even shot well. There is a particularly affecting image of a brachiosaurus slowly being engulfed in a cloud of ash that could have been a powerful closing statement had this been the end of the film. Instead, the film continues on. The sequel to a reboot stops to reboot and start a new story in the middle of the film. What crazy times we live in.

The second half of "Fallen Kingdom" decides it wants to be a goofy B-horror film, which is an abrupt change from the whiz-bang adventure of the previous hour, but it is a change for the better. The first half of the film lacked a sense of identity, merely blending together with other generic summer fare. Once the dinosaurs are back stateside, the evil representative guy reveals his master plan: selling dinosaurs on the black market. He does not elaborate on this plan much further, aside from the implication that these creatures could have military use. Sure, okay. To further add to the ridiculousness, the representative shmuck decides to engineer a custom-built velociraptor (the "Indoraptor") in the style of the engineered T-Rex of the previous film. Obviously, the creature gets loose, eats some of the paramilitary goons, and runs amok. There is a solid half-hour of Howard, Pratt, and a generic child actor being chased around a spooky old mansion by a giant mutant velociraptor. It is every bit as dumb and loud and silly as you could hope for. There is even a shot of a Good Guy raptor running away from an explosion like an action movie hero. Some might be turned off by this nosedive into craziness (the mutant raptor can even open doors this time), but for those with a love of weird monster movies, there is plenty to enjoy.

I was not particularly enjoying "Fallen Kingdom" until the second half of the film. The parts with the mutant raptor realize that the characters of the "Jurassic World" films are not why people come to see them. It delivers on dino action in full, to a ridiculous degree. Everything is absurd and illogical, but it works in the way those pulpy Lincoln & Child-type sci-fi/adventure books work. It is strictly lowbrow fun, but what an hour of fun it is. I wish the first half had been as entertaining, but it is certainly worth sitting through that part to get to the zany dinosaur-in-a-mansion part.

Rating: 6/10

Movie Review: Deadpool 2 (2018)

Originally published 30 July 2018 on Odyssey at https://www.theodysseyonline.com/deadpool-2-review-2586468410

"A much-needed breath of fresh air in a crowded superhero market."

Summer blockbuster season is here once again, ready to pummel audiences with action movies and big-name adaptations. If "Deadpool 2" is any indication, summer 2018 is off to a good start. This superhero sequel improves upon nearly everything that did not work about the first film, chiefly the watery plot and inconsistent humor. The direction is a marked improvement over its predecessor as well. David Leitch (co-director of "John Wick") delivers a far more colorful and spirited product than the dreary, clunky original.

Following a spoilerific tragedy, Wade Wilson, aka Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) finds himself depressed and alone. He attempts to immolate himself in a giant explosion, only to realize that due to his regenerative abilities he cannot die. Looking for meaning in his life, the Merc with a Mouth joins the X-Men (well, just the members that appeared in the last film, plus Negasonic Teenage Warhead's girlfriend). On their first outing with their new member, the X-Men must stop a young mutant named Russell (Julian Dennison) who is attempting to use his fire powers to burn down the orphanage where he is a resident. Deadpool botches the mission and lands in mutant jail alongside Russell.

While in prison, Wilson develops a tenuous fatherly bond with Russell (as he quips in the film's cold open "["Deadpool 2"] is a movie about family"). This bond is soon tested with the arrival of Cable (Josh Brolin), a time-traveling cyborg mutant who is out to kill Russell. In the future, Russell becomes a supervillain who kills Cable's family. Deadpool sees the good in Russell and thinks he can prevent him from becoming a future killer. In the ensuing prison scuffle, Wilson and Cable are thrown from the prison, leaving Russell behind. It is now up to Deadpool to enlist a ragtag team of heroes so he can rescue his young pal before Cable gets to him.

The strength of "Deadpool 2" derives from its large cast of supporting characters. After all, this is a movie about family. Deadpool is empty inside but learns to fill the void with the company of his X-Men friends and his assembled team of rejects, the X-Force. Colossus, one of the best parts of the first "Deadpool" is still great here, working as a scoutmaster goody-two-shoes straight man to Wilson's violent Looney Tune antics. A new edition to this movie is Domino, a mutant who possesses the power of luck. While Deadpool mocks the usefulness of her ability, she makes a great case for her appearance in future X-Men related films. In her action scenes, her mutant ability allows her to survive death-defying stunts and encounters by comically slim chances. Think of the absurd setups from "Final Destination", but for avoiding death. Josh Brolin also proves to be yet another compelling superhero villain after his performance as Thanos in "Avengers: Infinity War". Cable only wants to prevent Russell from creating a disastrous future, but he does not share Deadpool's that the boy can change for the better.

In addition to a great cast, "Deadpool 2" is incredibly funny. Like the previous film, there are pop culture and comic book references galore, but this time it actually feels fresh instead of like rejected "Family Guy" quips. There is a greater emphasis on cartoony slapstick graphic violence in this movie and less on the painfully juvenile sex jokes of its predecessor. While not every joke hits, they fly by at such a rapid-fire rate that they land more often than not.

"Deadpool 2" is a welcome breath of fresh air, or rather a rancid burritos-and-beer burp, for the superhero movie market. Its self-referential humor frequently takes aim at other superhero movies, and it is nice to see one that is willing to take aim at its colleagues. If nothing else, "Deadpool 2" is finally something different in the superhero market. The first movie promised to be the raunchy shakeup we had all been desiring but wound up delivering a generic origin story. After so much sameness, this is finally something different. This is a superhero movie that recognizes the inherent goofiness of the source material and, shock of all shocks actually has fun with it.

Rating: 8/10

Movie Review: Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

Originally published 30 July 2018 on Odyssey at https://www.theodysseyonline.com/solo-a-star-wars-story-review

"Does "Solo" overcome its troubled production to bring some summer fun?"

"Solo: A Star Wars Story" is part of Disney's plan to release a "Star Wars" film every year for the rest of eternity or until box office receipts dry up. This film is the second entry in Disney's "Star Wars" catalog to feature the moniker "A Star Wars Story" as if audiences would be unsure if "Solo" was actually about Han Solo if there was not a handy subtitle to remind them which Disney property they are viewing. The film caused a stir last year when it came out that the original directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller ("The Lego Movie") had been fired from the project and replaced with Ron Howard ("Apollo 13"), who would subsequently reshoot 80% of the movie. Despite the troubled production, "Solo" manages to avoid being a disaster of "Justice League" proportion, but nonetheless falls short as a fun summer blockbuster.

The story is a prequel, taking place somewhere in the chronology of the "Star Wars Rebels" TV series, which is to say the film's events occur at some point before the original "Star Wars". Han (Alden Ehrenreich), who does not get a surname until a few minutes into the movie, lives a hard life on the industrial planet of Corellia. He and his girlfriend Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke) dream of one day making it off of their home planet and starting a new life together. However, in their attempt to escape, the couple is separated and only Han makes it off the planet by hastily enlisting in the imperial army. Three years later, now dubbed Han Solo by the imperials, Han finds himself wrapped up with a gang of thieves who are out scavenging the battlefields. Along the way, he also meets his iconic companion, Chewbacca. What adventures the Wookie had in the interim between "Revenge of the Sith" and this film are not mentioned, presumably to save material for the inevitable "Chewbacca: A Star Wars Story".

After a botched train heist (farewell, CGI Jon Favreau, we barely knew ye), Solo and his new criminal comrade Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson) must find a way to appease their contractor, Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany). Conveniently for Han, Qi'ra works for Vos, and the two have a tenuously happy reunion. To make amends for their bungled mission, Solo and Beckett offer to steal more of hyperfuel (a glorified space MacGuffin) from the spice mines of planet Kessel. With the help of Qi'ra, Han recruits Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover) and his ship, the Millennium Falcon, to complete the mission and escape from Kessel through the treacherous Kessel Run. Any "Star Wars" fan worth their mettle knows where this is going. The heist is, of course, successful, and Solo makes the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs. This is not a spoiler, by the way. Han boasts of this feat in the original "Star Wars". This film decides to show us how that happened. The film continues on for what feels like another forty-five minutes past this climactic chase sequence, with all manner of double-crossings going on as Han and the crew try to give the hyperfuel to Vos. This being a Disney franchise film, the door is obviously left open for future sequels, or even worse, in-universe crossovers à la the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Like the widely reviled prequels before it, "Solo: A Star Wars Story" falls prey to the constant desire to retroactively explain things about the original "Star Wars" trilogy. We as an audience do not really need to know how Han got his blaster, nor do we need to know how Chewbacca learned to play holographic chess, but "Solo" is going to tell us anyway. Constantly connecting things and events from the original trilogy only serves to make the universe feel smaller and more cramped.

The performances and characters of "Solo" do not fare any better. Alden Ehrenreich comes off like a second-rate Chris Pratt, but the script does him no favors. In the original trilogy, Han Solo was roguish and perhaps a bit brusque. "Solo" makes him too much a jackass to ever care about him as a character. Donald Glover's performance as Lando Calrissian is serviceable, but he is somehow outshined by his snarky robot co-pilot, L3-37 (Phoebe Waller-Bridge). Strangely, the two non-human members of the supporting cast, Chewbacca, and L3-37, are the only two characters who breathe any spark of life (and fun) into the film.

"Solo" brings nothing new to the "Star Wars" universe, and it frequently feels like a placeholder film meant to tide over fans until "Star Wars Episode IX" comes out next year. I have no idea if Lord and Miller's take on Han Solo would have been any better than what Ron Howard delivered, but the final product is just not compelling. It drags for a majority of its runtime and is dead on arrival whenever an action sequence rolls around. Disney is well on its way to making yearly "Star Wars" films something to dread instead of something to anticipate.

Rating: 4/10