SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3
THIRD TIME AROUND FOR THE LORD OF THE RINGS
Hogging the limelight.
★★
OUT NOW / CERT PG / 110 MINS
DIRECTOR Jeff Fowler
CAST Ben Schwartz, Colleen O’Shaughnessey, Idris Elba, Keanu Reeves, Jim Carrey, James Marsden, Tika Sumpter, Krysten Ritter
PLOT Super-swift hedgehog Sonic (Schwartz) takes on new nemeses: the malevolent Shadow (Reeves) and evil moustachioed brainiac Gerald Robotnik (Carrey), relative of his old foe.
AFTER THE PARAMOUNT logo (the stars replaced by gold rings flying towards the iconic mountain) and the Sega ident, Sonic The Hedgehog 3 rather ironically segues to a large credit for Neal Moritz’s production company, ‘Original Film’. It’s not often a production banner throws unintentional shade on the film that follows, but there is very little that is novel in Sonic 3’s subsequent 109 minutes. Director Jeff Fowler’s all-too-familiar third adventure for the Blue Blur is probably the pick of the bunch, but this is still the kind of low-hanging fruit — endless quipping, bland moralising, dance routines — meted out by every bog-standard animated kids’ flick.