- Starring
- Ben Schwartz, Jim Carrey, Keanu Reeves
- Director
- Jeff Fowler
- Rating
- PG
- Genre
- Action, Adventure, Comedy
- Release date
- December 20, 2024
- Where to watch
- Paramount+
Overall Score
Rating Overview
Rating Summary
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 continues the high-speed adventures of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles as they face a new threat from the Doctors Robotnik, who have a powerful new ally, Shadow the Hedgehog. The heroic trio must work together to stop this latest scheme to harness the power of Chaos Energy and destroy the world.
Sonic 3 Review
If you’ve watched the previous Sonic The Hedgehog installments, you pretty much know what to expect from the franchise. True to form, Sonic 3 is a bright and bouncy action adventure with over-the-top characters, hammy performances, and a thin plot. It knows its audience and doesn’t try to please everyone by being more than it is.
From a strictly critical perspective, Sonic the Hedgehog is a mess of convenience-driven juvenile silliness that suffers from the standard symptoms of sequelitis. Having already twice saved the world from being taken over by the twisted Dr. Robotnik, there are now three heroes, two Doctors Robotnik, a CGI baddie, and a G.U.N. gone bad. Furthermore, the world must now be saved, not from subjugation but from annihilation.
Overstuffed with CGI characters and dueling Jim Carreys filling every inch of digital cellulose, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 leaves little room for the human characters who once provided the franchise’s emotional anchor. Tom and Maddie have been demoted to perfunctory roles that feel like tacked-on afterthoughts. Even those of G.U.N. have been relegated to little more than NPC baddies to serve as obstacles in a minor fetch quest.
The movie attempts to inject some heart into Shadow’s (Keanu Reeves) character arc. However, like other story elements, it’s an obligatory addition that is quickly shuffled to the side to make room for more meaningless CGI battles between invulnerable combatants.
With jokes that only rarely land and a second act that drags, the bulk of Sonic 3’s cinematic oomph rests on the surprising amount of chemistry shared between its three digital leads and their perfectly cast voice performers. Despite his rather boring mini-series, Idris Alba’s stoic and socially unaware Knuckles provides an excellent foil to Ben Schwartz’s energy-infused Sonic and Colleen O’Shaughnessey’s optimistic people-pleaser Tails.
Combined with some of the industry’s best visual effects, there’s enough spectacle and sizzle in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 to entertain the kids. However, parents may want to download Libby and listen to a free audiobook. (FYI: You’ll need good earbuds—it’s a loud movie.)
PARENTAL NOTES
Important Information for Parents
Our Parental Notes flag the material parents may want to know about before pressing play, including profanity, blasphemy, adult content, extreme violence, frightening intensity, hyper-stimulating sequences, and other family-content concerns.
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James Carrick
James Carrick is a passionate film enthusiast with a degree in theater and philosophy. James approaches dramatic criticism from a philosophic foundation grounded in aesthetics and ethics, offering insight and analysis that reveals layers of cinematic narrative with a touch of irreverence and a dash of snark.
Saw a lesbian couple in today’s new trailer.
Uuuuuuugggggggghhhhhh
Can we get verification on this? My son is dying to go see it this weekend.
We weren’t invited to a press screening. I’ll be watching it tomorrow night and have something up by Friday morning.
Saw the movie. The women I saw in the trailer what looked like lesbians might not be after all. What I saw was they were talking to each other nonverbally. There was no kiss or hand holding (except for that one scene where they looked scared from the Eclipse Canno), but that might be one of them holding her hands together.
As soon as they said the words “space colony” in the post credits scene of the last movie I was in it for this one. I don’t think it’s for all viewers, but if you’re a 90’s kid who grew up with Sonic Adventure 2 Battle as your favorite GCN title like me and to a lesser extent my husband, I think you’ll be more than satisfied with how they handled Shadow’s story and the movie in general.
I was confused by Professor Gerald’s involvement as a living character is this adaptation, but I think they made it work for what it was. Maria had more character in this than I think I’ve ever seen (little though it was) so that was interesting to me, as was the decision not to have her and Gerald living on the space colony instead of Earth.
The music they included from the games was very welcome and the way they used Live and Learn was especially good, in my opinion, as it was more than just an Easter egg. I was also happy that when *SPOILER ALERT, I guess?* Shadow changes to super Shadow, they had him colored white-ish and red instead of yellow like Sonic. Sonic Adventure 2 is the only game where he was depicted that way to my knowledge and I always thought it looked better than the yellow they went with in subsequent entries.
Over all, if you’re a veteran of Sonic games and a die hard Shadow fan, this is absolutely the best movie of the three. I’m so thankful they included so little of the human characters this time around and would love to see them even less in the next movie.
Since it looks like they might be doing the Sonic Heroes story next, I think that would be a wise decision.
It does leave me wondering if they would bother bringing Eggman back again though, since his part in that game was very much in the background.
There were one or two slower parts my four year old son checked out of a bit, (who really goes to see a Sonic movie for the human plots anyway?) but otherwise he loved it.
I’m looking forward to getting it digitally and editing out the language and weird gender reference so we can watch it again.
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