Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Review

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Sonic the Hedgehog 2 hits theaters on April 8, 2022.

When it was released in 2020, Sonic the Hedgehog had the distinction of being only the second Actually Good live-action video game adaptation after Pokemon: Detective Pikachu, but it certainly wasn't reinventing the wheel. Instead, it harkened back to an era when kids' movies were decidedly for kids and unapologetically unpretentious. And if you were into that, like I was, then you can rest assured that Sonic the Hedgehog 2 brings more of that exact same energy – a lot more! For better or worse, this sequel feels bigger in every way. It may bite off a bit more than it can chew, but for the most part, it’s just as funny, charming, and heartfelt as the first movie.

In fact, there are several aspects in which this sequel improves upon its predecessor; in particular, how much more of Sega’s Sonic universe feels baked into it. Sure, there were Easter Eggs galore in the first one, but with the job of laying the groundwork for the series and how Sonic fits into this world out of the way, director Jeff Fowler and writers Pat Casey, Josh Miller, and John Whittington are allowed to really go nuts with working in notes from the games -- and that they do. Of course, this is inherent with just in fact that famous characters Tails and Knuckles are joining the Blue Blur in this go-around, and the movie captures the spirit of these characters wonderfully.

What We Said About the First Sonic Movie

IGN's Akeem Lawanson gave 2020's Sonic the Hedgehog a 7/10, writing "While this family-friendly action-comedy suffers from a simplistic story and leans too heavily on tired visual cliches, Sonic the Hedgehog is nevertheless boosted by solid performances from Ben Schwartz as Sonic and Jim Carrey as Dr. Robotnik." Read the full review here.

Whenever the three anthropomorphic critters are on screen, it’s a blast, which bodes well for the future of this burgeoning cinematic franchise. Longtime Tails voice actor Colleen O'Shaughnessey reprises the role for the big-screen here, which was a smart choice; she brings all the sweetness and earnestness that the adorable fox needs. Tails’ relationship with Sonic (voiced again by Ben Schwartz, which remains great casting) is an emotional highlight, too, and allows the hedgehog some admirable character development. Sonic may compare himself to Batman, but the “with great power comes great responsibility” angle of his story aligns a lot more with Peter Parker. The sequel really leans into the fact that this super-powered mammal is still just a kid, and it’s all the better for it, with some satisfying growth from the speedy blue hero.

As for our other furry friend, Idris Elba steps into the shoes of Knuckles, and yeah, of course it’s awesome. Is anyone surprised? He brings a certain gravitas to the role, but also gets some of the funniest lines in the movie as the hilariously self-serious echidna. He and Jim Carrey’s Dr. Robotnik are perfect foils for each other as entertainingly mismatched allies. Speaking of which, if this really is Carrey’s last role before retiring from acting, then it feels fitting that it’s possibly the most Jim Carrey of all Jim Carrey performances. He goes even bigger as Robotnik continues to lose his marbles, and manages to be appropriately menacing at times, too. It’s Carrey at his over-the-top best.

This franchise is still finding its footing, but it continues to move in the right direction.

The humans aside from Robotnik, however, don’t fare as well. Sonic the Hedgehog 2’s biggest flaw is that it doesn’t quite know how to juggle the characters and storyline from the previous movie gracefully as it ushers in its new players. Without getting into too many plot details, it begins by whisking away Tom (James Marsden) and Maddie (Tika Sumpter) off to Hawaii, and every time we cut to them and their human drama, the film loses steam. It’s natural that they wouldn’t just want to kick Sonic’s adoptive parents to the curb – that would be even worse – but their story feels shoehorned in in a way that doesn’t really work. The silver lining is that Natasha Rothwell, as Maddie’s sister Rachel, gets a few very funny moments to shine in these scenes.

It’s also indicative of Sonic the Hedgehog 2’s other issue: its length. At two hours, it clocks in at 20 minutes longer than its predecessor, which feels wholly unnecessary. It’s such a blast in the first half, as it moves briskly with colorful action while still making room to build Sonic and Tails’ friendship (and Robotnik and Knuckles’, er, frenemyship), but starts to overstay its welcome in its second half. Yes, there’s a whole Sonic Cinematic Universe to establish, but as a standalone entry, it could’ve done all that and still wrapped up 20 minutes earlier.

Still, the overall heart of its message largely makes up for its shortcomings. Yes, we’ve seen the “power of friendship!” message over and over again in kids’ movies, but Sonic the Hedgehog 2 really makes it work, especially in its warm, sincere, and well-earned conclusion. This franchise is still finding its footing, but it continues to move in the right direction. In short, sign me right up for the Knuckles TV show and the sequels that this movie very much sets up.

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The Bubble Review

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The Bubble premieres Friday, April 1 on Netflix.

Boasting an impressive cast of seriously hilarious folks, Judd Apatow's The Bubble unleashes the lunacy of preening actors attempting to star in the sixth installment of a dino-war franchise, toiling through an absurd production during the pandemic. The "bubble" is the hotel and movie set that everyone working on Cliff Beasts 6 is confined to, though the meta-comedy aspects at work here, in which Hollywood attempts to take the piss out of Hollywood, also constitutes an ideological bubble in its own right. Filled with sublime talent, and some solidly silly moments, The Bubble is still overlong and requires spending a bit too much time with an ensemble of selfish dopes.

As the cast of this in-movie knock on Jurassic Park -- which is not just due to the dinosaur premise but also Jurassic Park: Dominion's unprecedented 18-month production -- find themselves trapped in a seemingly endless loop of lockdowns, rewrites, and other sanity-testing hiccups, the story wears thin. The "stir crazy" elements seep into real-life viewing and make for a somewhat repetitive watch. Despite there being a dozen characters on different story arcs, they're all in some regard cut from the same egomaniac cloth and so the overall gag never changes.

Starring Karen Gillan, Fred Armisen, David Duchovny, Keegan-Michael Key, Leslie Mann, Pedro Pascal, and a slew of others, The Bubble feels like an overwrought counterpoint to Gal Gadot's poorly received pandemic-era rendition of "Imagine," with Apatow wanting to play around with the tone-deaf underbelly of the movie business. It's nothing we haven't seen before though, and on top of that, the fun wears off fast when big movies are made about how dumb it is that big movies get made. It's as if the messaging is "most actors, directors, and producers are awful -- but not us! That's why we can make fun of it." Yes, it's likely this collection of comedy folk is also poking fun at themselves too, but there's still a "them, not us" vibe.

Gillan plays Cliff Beasts saga star Carol Cobb, now returning to the franchise after skipping the fifth movie to make an alien attack movie called Jereuseum Rising. She falls back into the Cliff Beasts fold, rejoining Duchovny, Mann, and Key -- with Pascal playing a new-to-the-series veteran Sean Penn-type and Iris Apatow portraying a young famous TikTok'er with millions of followers cast because of her social media popularity. Apatow is flighty and formidable here as a quasi-outsider, who's risen to fame in a newfangled showbiz way the others don't understand. Are there a few TikTok dance segments? Sure. Does one in particular deliver a big laugh? Absolutely.

The cast's production and hotel support staff consist of Maria Bakalova (Oscar-nominated for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm), Peter Serafinowicz (The Tick), Vir Das (Whiskey Cavalier), Harry Trevaldwyn, and Samson Kayo -- with fun cameos by John Cena, Maria Bamford, Daisy Ridley, Kate McKinnon, and more thrown in for good measure. Again, this is a super-talented team, and there's a comfort food element at work seeing them all be ridiculous together -- as flying dinos rampage and blood, vomit, and carnage run rampant on and off set -- but often The Bubble's messaging is muddled. These characters all convince themselves that they're humanitarians because Cliff Beasts 6 is what the world needs to feel good, while The Bubble, in its own right, thinks what the world needs is the movie business taking a hyper-specific swipe at itself.

The Bubble needed a time-shave to prevent it from being as maddening for us as it is for the characters.

The timing of The Bubble is woefully off, though an argument could be made that any and all pandemic-themed movies are will be outcasts no matter when they're released. In the throes of lockdown was poor form. Now, though? When the U.S., for better or worse, has almost collectively decided to move on? It feels like a zone people don't want to revisit, even for comedy's sake. So we can't even say this should have come out a year ago because it mostly likely would have been received just as coldly.

Larger story elements aside, it is enjoyable to see Pascal inhabit the soul of an eccentric narcissist, Duchovny and Mann bicker about as an on-and-off couple, and Gillan serve as the goofy centerpiece, amongst other delightful performances. That being said, The Bubble needed a time-shave to prevent it from being as maddening for us as it is for the characters.

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Slow Horses Series Premiere Review - "Failure's Contagious" and "Work Drinks"

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Slow Horses premieres with two episodes on Apple TV+ on April 1, 2022, followed by one episode weekly every Friday.

Gary Oldman received an Oscar nomination for playing the brilliant British intelligence officer George Smiley in the 2011 adaptation of John le Carré’s Cold War thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and his role in Apple TV+’s Slow Horses, a faithful adaptation of Mick Herron’s 2010 spy thriller of the same name, feels like a direct extension of that performance. Oldman’s Jackson Lamb is a flabby and flatulent desk jockey leading a team of MI5 rejects. But there are hints in his excellent performance of an odious character that Lamb was once a master cold warrior, and that he might just be capable of calling up those skills again should he decide to care.

But Slough House, the colloquial name for the shabby office where Lamb rules as a petty tyrant, is where spies with once-promising careers are exiled after making embarrassing mistakes. Lamb’s latest charge is River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), who seems like he was pulled from Central Casting for star spies when he appears in the opening of Slow Horses’ two-episode premiere. River’s on a mission to stop a terrorist that feels like a well-executed if highly traditional thriller sequence except that he doesn’t actually catch the suicide bomber in the knick of time. By the time we see River again, he’s already spent eight months at Slough House, paying for his failure by doing the most menial and disgusting work Lamb can find. Lamb hopes to crush his employees’ spirits and make them quit the service altogether, and it’s a credit to both the makeup team and Lowden’s performance that the time seems to have visibly aged the bright young actor.

There’s a bit of the early episodes of Orange Is the New Black in Slow Horses, with flashbacks and whispered secrets slowly revealing the misdeeds that landed each member of the ensemble in their current purgatory. There’s Min Harper (Dustin Demri-Burns), who left a classified disc on the train, and Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung), a hot-shot hacker desperate to know why he was sent to the doldrums of Slough House. Lamb treats his entire office with the sort of acidic contempt mastered by Alan Rickman, but special abuse goes to his personal assistant, Catherine Standish (Saskia Reeves), a recovering alcoholic traumatized by finding her former boss’ dead body.

Their uselessness and despair feels physically manifested in the dark and dingy Slough House as compared to the sleek glass of MI5 headquarters, where the regal Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) commands agents who actually get things done. It’s easy to understand why Lamb’s charges seek to escape from their particularly dark office comedy and find their way back to crisp action of real spy work.

When a British Pakistani college student is kidnapped by white supremacists, River sees an opportunity to both do good and get back into MI5’s good graces. The first two episodes tantalizingly begin setting up the pieces of a conspiracy, lightening the mood through the goofiness of its underdog heroes who are either desperate to turn their work relationships into something more meaningful or expressing their bitterness by firing barbs at their coworkers.

Herron’s novel was forward thinking in 2010 as it looked beyond the heroic stories of thwarted Islamic terror threats that dominated the genre following the Sept. 11 and 7/7 attacks, turning instead to examine corruption within security agencies, the rising threat of white nationalism, and the general feeling that Britain’s best days may have already passed. That last sentiment manifests both in Lamb’s frayed nature — even his socks have holes in them — and the reminiscences of River’s grandfather David Cartwright, a retired legendary spy whose influence is both a benefit and a burden to the agent eager to follow in his footsteps.

There’s a bit of similarity in the core messages of Slow Horses and Peacemaker.

While the two shows are radically tonally different, there’s a bit of similarity in the core messages of Slow Horses and Peacemaker. At a time when it’s hard to like or trust institutions, both shows instead put their faith in a band of misfits who might just be able to grow together and save the day. Like Oldman’s sharp version of Smiley hiding under Lamb’s ill-fitting clothes and greasy hair, the premiere of Slow Horses hints that greatness might be found where it’s least expected.

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Moonshot Review

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Moonshot premieres Thursday, March 31 on HBO Max.

It's too bad Moonshot didn't come out a month ago, during the closest thing we have to an official "rom-com season," as it's a sly and witty "enemies-to-more" comedy that nicely blends genre tropes with sci-fi snark. Starring Riverdale/Zack & Cody's Cole Sprouse and Deadly Class' Lana Condor, Moonshot, which is mostly set aboard a transport spaceship to Mars (no, not the moon), is peacefully sweet while also infused with a light subversive edge.

The charisma of the two leads counts for a lot, as does the late-stage use of Zach Braff as the story's future billionaire space magnate -- who normally would be used as a plot device to impart words of wisdom but here is played as a obtuse narcissist -- helping Moonshot tick upwards. The moments when this story zigs instead of zags, and also actually provides some laugh-out-loud lines, make for a cozy at-home watch featuring young pretty things (Scream's Mason Gooding and Fear Street's Emily Rudd also star) making eyes at each other among the stars.

Moonshot isn't all left turns, though. It still very much adheres to the genre's trappings and delivers the comfort food you'd expect. Sprouse's Walt is an unfocused fly-by-the-seat-of-his pants guy while Condor's Sophie is the anxious plan-oriented type, and while it's not the best look to have an extraordinary woman fall for a supremely average dude (Walt's mediocrity is a humorous running joke), the movie still has the good sense to have him be the one to want to follow and support her.

For most of his life, Walt has only had eyes for Mars, idolizing space explorer Leon Kovi (Braff, being delightfully dickish), while also getting rejected from Kovi's Mars project dozens of times due to his severe lack of skill in any and every necessary science. Sophie is a genius in her field and the two mix like oil and water at first, yet both make huge impulsive decisions to head to Mars for love. For Sophie, it's to see her long long-distance boyfriend Calvin (Gooding) and for Walt, it's to keep in touch with (ostensibly) the first girl to ever show him any interest (Rudd).

Moonshot is smart enough to never villainize the other love interests and instead actually makes them feel like good fits for Walt and Sophie at the outset, so much so that you might not even want Walt and Sophie to fall in love at first; you just want them to be with their respective partners/objects of affection. The entire middle part of the story is just the two of them trying to not get in trouble after Walt sneaks aboard the Mars craft. He doesn't want to get arrested and she doesn't want to get caught with a stowaway. The love element here sneaks up on you, in a good way, as it becomes clearer that their actual reasons for going to Mars aren't really what they think they are.

It plays it satisfyingly safe with the love story while mixing in a bit of bite with the sci-fi elements.

You don't usually get rom-coms with, like, actual special effects budgets, so kudos to Moonshot for putting its sci-fi foot forward. This story could have been told in any other setting, for sure, but staging it all in a bizarre, almost WALL-E-esque trashland future gives us something new to chew on and opens up a nice door to the movie's best zingers (which dabble in dark humor about humanity at points). Moonshot has fun with A.I. companions and various bleak prospects for Earth in a way that adds spice to the by-the-numbers notes -- a bit of old and new. Moonshot isn't exploring new ground, per se, and gives you what you expect from a romantic comedy, but its two leads and the overall fun had with the space backdrop creates a sugary, satisfying tale.

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