Yeah, 'Sonic the Hedgehog' looks kinda weird, but at least his movie seems kinda fun?
If you're worried about the look of the new Sonic the Hedgehog, I'm sorry to say I'm not here to reassure you. He does look kind of odd: not quite cool, not quite adorable, recognizably similar to his more popular video game incarnation but slightly tweaked.
But I will say this for the Sonic the Hedgehog footage that premiered at CinemaCon -- this movie has a great cast.
Paramount presented two different trailers at their presentation Wednesday, one focused on Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz) and human hero Tom (James Marsden), and another focused on Jim Carrey's villainous Doctor Eggman.
In the first, Tom, a small-town sheriff, first encounters Sonic as an electric-blue blur whipping down the road at 760 miles an hour, and then again in his toolshed, which Sonic has broken into for some unknown reason.
Sonic eventually explains to Tom that he's here to save the planet, and the rest of this trailer showed them trying to do just that -- exploding cars and enormous robots, racing up skyscrapers, criss-crossing the globe.
The video ended on a comic note, as Tom hides Sonic in a duffel bag to sneak him into a building, and explains to suspicious bystanders that, yes, there is a kid in his duffel bag, but it's not his kid.
After the first clip, Jim Carrey appeared at the Paramount presentation with an enormous bucket of popcorn, which he scattered across the stage and eventually dumped on the first row of the audience.
Some slightly awkward back-and-forth ensued between Carey and Paramount exec Kyle Davies in which the actor insisted the film was really about his character, Ivo Robotnik a.k.a. Eggman, and then we were into the second clip.
This one starts with a bunch of government officials discussing an energy surge that's knocked out power in the entire Pacific Northwest -- Sonic, we can assume.
They decide to call in an expert "who can understand what we're dealing with," which is how we get to Robotnik and his assistant pulling up in an enormous truck, and immediately picking a fight with an army officer played by Neal McDonough, before he sets off to find Tom and track down Sonic.
Robotnik is classic Jim Carrey -- colorful, cartoonish, over-the-top, and impossible to ignore. Carrey himself seems to be having the time of his life in the role, of a literal mustache-twirling villain prone to do things like beat up jerks or engage in an impromptu dance break in the middle of an ominous-looking laboratory.
Marsden, a likable, up-for-anything presence who's got some practice co-starring with CG creatures, seems a smart pick to play Tom. And Schwartz's over-caffeinated energy seems like the right fit for a character who might exclaim that he's walked 9 million steps in a day.
To the extent that the Sonic the Hedgehog footage looked promising, it's thanks to the solid casting, since neither the dialogue nor the action stood out in any special way.
Sonic the Hedgehog probably doesn't stand much chance of stealing Detective Pikachu's thunder -- but as a cute kids' adventure, you could probably do worse.
