Jim Carrey puts on a heck of a show in Sonic the Hedgehog 3. That shouldn’t be construed as a reason, in itself, to run out and see the film, but if you get stuck taking a preadolescent Sonic-head to it, you’ll remember why Carrey was hailed as a new comedic genius. He gives a tour de force of weapons-grade silliness here, and this time he does it stereo.
He returns for the third time to the role of Sonic’s nemesis, the villainous Dr. Robotnik, but this time he also gets to play his own, even more villainous grandfather Robotnik. He is, essentially, his own co-star here, and few actors have ever seemed more impressed and delighted with their scene partner.
Buoyantly voiced again by Ben Schwartz, the title character, drawn from a Sega video game, is a blue-furred and quilled little goober who doesn’t look much like a hedgehog and who can run at ultrasonic speeds. This time out he and his pals Knuckles (voiced by Idris Elba), a red echidna who doesn’t look much like an echidna, and Tails (voiced by Colleen O’Shaughnessey) a two-tailed fox who does look a little bit like a fox but can use her tails to fly like a helicopter, are dispatched to face another extraterrestrial hedgehog called Shadow (voiced by Keanu Reeves).
Sci-fi spectacle ensues, ranging from robotic crabs to huge spaceships rising from the Thames to chunks cut off of celestial bodies. Robotniks grand-pere and fils are pulled into the plot as allies of Shadow. The theme is the importance of family; Sonic was adopted by kindly James Marsden and Tika Sumpter and is thus happy and positive, while Shadow suffered tragedy and is therefore angry and vengeful. Under the direction, once again, of Jeff Fowler, it all builds to a surprisingly high-stakes, Wagnerian Götterdämmerung of a finale aboard a doomsday weapon.
This is reflected in the goofy grandiosity of Carrey’s performance(s), turning each line he speaks into a feast of seething sarcasm. In each of the three films, he’s managed the seemingly impossible task of taking the character a little farther over the top, and there’s an almost exalted quality in the way he takes him all the way into orbit this time.
