“Sonic the Hedgehog 2” picked up where the first movie left off with Dr. Robotnik [Eggman] on the Mushroom Planet building on an overly complicated Rube Goldberg machine. Suddenly, a portal appeared, revealing a red hedgehog named Knuckles. Both Robotnik and Knuckles agreed to team up to hunt for the world’s favorite blue hedgehog, Sonic. 

I really enjoy this movie. It is the perfect movie to sit back, relax and have a good time. My favorite part is when Sonic turned into Super Sonic. Growing up with the original 90’s TV show, as well as a few of the video games, I liked the overall feel of this movie. The story and plot felt like it was ripped straight out of the original TV show. 

The movie had a lot of great qualities and strengths. The visuals looked absolutely stunning. The character designs for Knuckles and Tails looked super accurate to their video game counterparts. I was relieved to see the special effects team did not mess up the character designs as they did with the original Sonic design. Who else remembered that monstrosity?

I also really liked the character development that Sonic and the other supporting characters go through. Sonic has to prove that he has what it takes to be a real hero. At the end of the movie, he learned about the importance of responsibility and accepted Tom “Donut Lord” Wachowski as his father. That was a powerful message to have and it showed how Sonic has matured throughout the movies. Knuckles learned about how to forgive, move on from a tragedy and make new friends. Tails, while he did not go through any major character changes, the audience still learned about his past and why he decided to look for Sonic. He learned how to embrace his “weirdness” and that’s what made him so relatable. 

The humor of the movie, while not every joke landed for me, was still incredibly funny. Jim Carrey as Dr. Robotnik is the funniest part of the movie. When he turned in possession of the Master Emerald, the changed pitch in his voice was hilarious. His assistant, Agent Stone, having a creepy fantasy about him was an absolute knee-slapper in the theater. The funniest part of the movie is when Sonic remarked that “Channing Tatum makes it look so easy.” I said to myself, “Oh my god. I can’t believe he watched ‘Magic Mike’.”

No movie is perfect and this movie is no exception. While I really do like the addition of Tails, his main contribution to the story is to spew exposition. I still found his back story to be interesting. The main issue with this movie, in my opinion, was the secondary plot with Rachel and Randy’s wedding. It felt slow and uninteresting. It was not exciting until it was revealed that Randy was a secret agent. This really hurt the pacing of the movie.

If I could change the movie, I would have Sonic search for each of the individual Chao Emeralds, rather than finding a compass that led to the Master Emerald. It would be similar to “Avengers: Infinity War” where each of the Avengers tried to find the infinity stones. This would have made the movie more intense as Sonic has to try and not let a single Chao Emerald be in the hands of Dr. Robotnik or Knuckles.

Is the second Sonic movie better than the first movie? In my opinion, I believe that the first movie is slightly better than the second movie. While I do believe that the second movie is funny, the first movie is just funnier. Although Alexis Soto, a business administration major from Liberal, disagreed with me and believes that the second movie is better than the first.

“I do believe that Sonic two is better than Sonic one because they introduce more people in the movie including Tales and Knuckles,” Soto said. 

Overall, “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” is a great movie for kids and grown-ups alike.