Sonic the Hedgehog 2

Jeff Fowler’s Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is intermittently funny, energetically performed and too padded to earn a general recommendation. It wants to enlarge the family adventure, giving Sonic more animated company and keeping a separate human story in play. That is a reasonable ambition, but 123 minutes leaves an awful lot of space for material that would barely support a brisker film. There are stretches when the characters are good company, followed by stretches when we simply want the story to get on.

Jim Carrey is the clearest reason to persevere. His Dr. Robotnik is performed with such extravagant physical effort that even familiar villainous business becomes entertaining. We laughed at that bodily fuss: he makes the character’s self-importance funny before a joke has properly arrived. The performance has a looseness that the rest of the film could use, and Jeff Fowler gets more comic value from letting him carry on than from many of the scripted gags.

Ben Schwartz gives Sonic enough vocal lift to make even routine chatter sound eager. Colleen O’Shaughnessey brings a welcome brightness to Tails, and Idris Elba gives Knuckles sufficient presence to justify adding another character. These performances supply much of the warmth that the busier scenes lack. We would happily spend more time with them, especially when the alternative is another diversion involving the humans.

The screenplay by Josh Miller, Patrick Casey and John Whittington keeps interrupting that appeal with a wedding in Hawaii. A detour can be worth taking, and Natasha Rothwell has the comic assurance to make parts of this one work alongside James Marsden. But the change of emphasis lasts too long, and the film has to spend time recovering the pace it has surrendered. Their scenes belong to a broad family comedy that never quite fits around Sonic’s adventure.

Brandon Trost’s cinematography makes the action reasonably easy to follow, without giving it much personality beyond the characters doing the running. Luke Freeborn’s production design gives the wedding its own look, but the location never becomes interesting enough to justify the time spent there. The effects are less persuasive, with an unfinished look in places that makes the physical danger harder to believe. The action has energy, though too little of it feels consequential.

Jim May’s editing maintains a hurried pace within individual sequences while leaving the larger problem of length untouched. Those passages can be busy and the film can still drag; here, that happens often enough to become wearing. Junkie XL’s music reinforces the hurry, but does little to give successive bursts of action a different feel. The quieter comic moments struggle to compete with all this effort to keep things moving.

Family adventure does not need an unfamiliar story, but it does need to know when the joke has landed and when to move on. This sequel keeps adding incidents long after its characters have done enough to win a little affection. Existing Sonic enthusiasts may be patient with that. For a household without a committed supporter, we would choose something shorter.