It’s wild that Sega spent two and a half decades making bad sequel after bad sequel to the original slate of Sonic games and, in a climate where the idea of a “best” video game movie is like saying you have the healthiest cigarette, Hollywood comes along and makes the best video game adaptation out of a Sonic the Hedgehog sequel. It’s perplexing… but I kind of love it.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 picks up after the first film with Jim Carrey’s Robotnik trapped on another world and Sonic living with his now adopted parents (James Marsden and Tika Sumpter). But Carrey escapes with the help of a very vengeful Knuckles the Echidna and they head back to Earth to find some Chaos Emeralds. Tails the two-tailed fox shows up too. That’s a lot of Sonic nouns…

I thought this movie kind of starts a little wobbly and takes some time to finds its legs. At first, I was a little disappointed this sequel went full video game plot after the first flick was mostly a slight road trip buddy movie. But, then again, this IS a video game adaptation so it kind of makes sense to go full video game. It takes a few to really get into gear… but, when it does, the movie is a lot of fun.

As with the first flick, there’s a lot of random comedy and pop culture references (usually from Sonic and Jim Carrey) that don’t always land. It’s corny and cheesy… and sometimes I laughed a lot. Add to that they need to find a purpose for all the human characters so they bump them off to a Hawaiian wedding which results in a lot of scenes that feel like they are saving money by not having a bevy of CGI critters to animate. And, just as I was settling into my smug superiority over identifying their obvious money-saving scheme, these scenes actually got pretty funny (and even a little cool).

But the movie still has time in its two hour runtime for a big video game plot and largely that all worked as a fun action adventure flick. Plenty of visual references to the games too, for those keeping count.

And the final big battle with an actual Final Boss in a video game movie was also just simple fun. Really felt like they understood the assignment and gave us a video game moment that didn’t feel unearned, out of place, or corny. It was a cool, fun scene that still should work for the unimitated.

I dug this movie and consider it now (officially!!!!) the best video game adaptation. It shouldn’t have been this hard to pull off… Hollywood has only been trying for thirty (!!) years. It surpasses the first film, especially in the final act. If it loses out on heart and humanity by not being as much of a road trip buddy comedy, I think that can be forgiven. It’s a surprisingly good action/adventure kids film.

Movies Based on Video Games Ranked: https://letterboxd.com/jhilke/list/movies-based-on-a-video-game-ranked/

Score: 86