Sonic the Hedgehog 2, review: a bizarre romantic subplot puts the brakes on the Sega hero

One of the biggest surprises of 2020’s Sonic the Hedgehog was that a film based on a video-game character known for running very fast through multicoloured fantastical lands would involve so many scenes in which he was driven around Montana in the passenger seat of a Toyota. Or took part in a bar-room brawl, played for laughs. Or was a vehicle for extensive product placement for the American property website Zillow. Or emitted so much flatulence.

Even so, that film managed to pull in £250 million in the month or so before cinemas battened down the hatches for Covid – which meant that this sequel, shot during the pandemic, was an inevitability. And it does – albeit occasionally, and briefly – look a bit like it was inspired by the original games. There’s a scene in which our hero snowboards down a mountainside while jumping on top of wasp-shaped robots, and another in which he runs through an ancient labyrinth full of sub-Indiana Jones spike-traps. So in that respect, it counts as an upgrade.

Otherwise, however, another banquet of confusion awaits. The premise pits Sonic (Ben Schwartz) and his newfound fan-slash-sidekick Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey) against Jim Carrey’s evil Dr Robotnik and a pink echidna called Knuckles (Idris Elba), in a race to unearth the mythical Master Emerald. So far, so Sega Mega Drive circa 1994.

But the plot either works around or selectively ignores its hero’s signature fleet-footedness far more often than it puts it to use, and the domestic backstory remains bizarre. Sonic, an alien, is now essentially the adopted child of (human) Green Hills residents Tom (James Marsden) and Maddie (Tick Sumpter), and he refers to Marsden as “Dad”, which is never not odd.

Worse still, this arrangement leads into a long, detailed subplot about a family wedding gone disastrously wrong, in which Sonic himself barely features. While watching Maddie’s abrasive sister Rachel (Natasha Rothwell) chasing, in a bridal gown, her hunky but duplicitous husband-to-be (Shemar Moore) around a heavily branded Hawaiian resort, you may find yourself wondering whether Paramount had a spare half-hour of unused 2000s romcom sitting in a cupboard somewhere and decided to splice it in, just to get the thing up to feature-length.

Elsewhere, there’s yet another confrontation in a rowdy bar – this one in the wilds of Russia, and centred on an interminable dance-off set to Mark Ronson’s 2014 song Uptown Funk – as well as more of the perplexing graphical choices that bedevilled the original, such as the cheap-looking whoosh lines that trail from the animated characters whenever they’re meant to be moving at speed.

And again, Carrey rehashes his 1990s children’s-entertainer shtick. In fairness, my own seven- and eight-year-olds found this pretty entertaining, but thanks (presumably) to Covid restrictions on set, there’s an even more depressing sense of the Ace Ventura star being marooned on screen, mugging to empty space into which a wisecracking CGI gonk will later be copied and pasted.

As for the gonk himself, he’s as exhausting as before: endless backchat, smart-alecky asides and idiotic pop-culture references, plus some rote outrageous hijinks which cause bystanders to freeze on the spot and drop their food on at least two occasions. High-speed antics have never felt this slow.

PG cert, 122 mins. Dir: Jeff Fowler. In cinemas from Friday.