My Review of "Sonic the Hedgehog 2"

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 has recently come out. If you already saw the original Sonic the Hedgehog then you pretty much know what you're getting yourself into with this sequel. Still you probably have some apprehensions from watching this movie because it's a movie sequel to a popular video game franchise. Hollywood has had a bad reputation for churning out bad movie adaptations. How are they going to catch lighting in a bottle twice in a row?

The movie predictably begins where the last movie had ended. The original movie ended off with a post-credit scene that pretty much set-up the storyline for this movie.

Robotnik is stranded on on some sort of mushroom world. Sonic and friends had transported him there in the last movie. Fortunately for Robotnik he's a genius and through his pure hatred of Sonic he's going to will himself to escape this monotonous planet.

Meanwhile on planet Earth, Sonic is adjusting quite well to his new life with the Wachowski's. They're raising him just as if he was their own child. Albeit a strange hyperactive alien child.

Unbeknownst to all of them there's a new character, Tails, that has arrived on Earth. You'd remember this from the previous movie. Tails is trying to warn Sonic of another new character that's about to enter the movie named Knuckles.

Through a series of events Robotnik tricks Knuckles and his comrades to save him from the mushroom planet and enact revenge on Sonic. They're all looking for a mysterious new McGuffin that will create a very satisfying last third of the movie.

There is some past history between Knuckles' people and Sonic's adoptive mother Longclaw in the first movie. I loved how all of this story really flowed from the first movie to this movie. It seemed seamless and you can tell that they had a nicely planned story set up.

I also love the fact that the writers of this movie were able to create a story that includes a lot of Sonic video game franchise easter eggs. We have the water scenes, the plane sequences, even Robotnik's crazy antics. If you are a fan of the video game or have some nostalgia of it you're going to love this movie. It's as if the writers were fans of the series as well and stuffed a lot of Sonic lore into this movie.

The beauty about this is that the movie still makes sense. It's pretty hard to have that right balance of hardcore references and having a coherent movie. You also have to consider that not a lot of people really paid attention to the story of the original games either.

Most of us have the imagery in our heads but never really followed the story. We know the scenarios because we've played through the games over and over. It's a nice to have some sort of understanding of how the things in the games were made to make sense with some sort of story.

Not a lot of people like the wedding side story that involved the Wachowski's but I actually liked it. I felt that the female characters in the first movie didn't get much play so they were redeemed by this wedding side story.

This movie also didn't tread too closely from the first movie in terms of scenes. We often have sequels that are just retreading the same scenes as the previous movie but with a little twist to them. I felt like this movie was original from the first one. There are slight similarities but they're just references to the first and they don't happen often.

Overall, I'm actually pretty impressed with what they did with this movie. It's not a movie of the year contender but what you have here is a great family film. It's got a lot of heart and charisma that will win the hearts of their audiences. I have to give this movie a 7 out of 10. The way they set this movie up makes it look like they will be getting a trilogy.