Review: 'Sonic the Hedgehog 3' offers fans a story they know, and gives the rest of us double the Jim Carrey antics

I’m not sure if the “Sonic the Hedgehog” movies are getting better or the manic misadventures of the super-speedy video game character have worn me down and I’m more susceptible to laughing at the silliness.

In “Sonic the Hedgehog 3,” what is now a trio of fast furry creatures — Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz), helicoptering Tails (voiced by Colleen O’Shaughnessey) and muscular Knuckles (voiced by Idris Elba) — are introduced hangng out with their human parents, Tom (James Marsden) and Maddie (Tika Sumpter) out in the woods. Then a helicopter from the Guardian Unit of Nations, or G.U.N., arrives, and Director Rockwell (Krysten Ritter) has an assignment.

A new alien has arrived, and it’s up to Sonic, Tails and Knuckles to figure out what he wants. He’s called Shadow (voiced by Keanu Reeves), and it appears that destruction is his agenda — and going through Team Sonic is the first item on that agenda.

Sonic & Co. need help, and they reluctantly agree to seek it from their old enemy, Dr. Ivo Robotnik — which is where Jim Carrey returns, his mustache still bushy and his evil habits still percolating. Team Sonic and Robotnik go to the lab where Shadow had been kept prisoner for 50 years, which is where Robotnik discovers that his own grandfather, Dr. Gerald Robotnik, was Shadow’s keeper.

While the two Robotniks reunite for evil purposes, director Jeff Fowler and three credited writers provide the backstory. It turns out that Shadow’s origins are not that different from Sonic’s — except that he was raised as a lab experiment, and the only happiness in his life was his friendship with Gerald’s grand-daughter (Ivo’s cousin), Maria (Alyla Browne). When a lab disaster leads to tragedy, Shadow wants to exact vengeance on the Earth — and the elder Robotnik is happy to help him fulfill that wish.

Fans of the “Sonic” games — like the two who live in my house and call me Dad — will recognize this story as the basis for the 2001 game “Sonic Adventure 2.” Fans will also enjoy the many Easter eggs and not-so-subtle references to the games, from music cues to new characters introduced in the mid-credit scenes.

It doesn’t take a fan to see the patterns of this franchise repeating themselves — like how Shadow, like Knuckles before him, is introduced as a villain with incredible powers, but things change as the story progresses.

The other constant in this franchise is that Jim Carrey is the reason to watch. Double duty — as Ivo Robotnik, aka Dr. Eggman, and his grayer, more beer-bellied grandpa — means twice the opportunity for Carrey to improvise jokes and play the movie for the silly spectacle that it is. “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” generates a fair amount of comedy and silly action, though being a fan of ol’ Sonic makes the movie that much more rewarding.

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‘Sonic the Hedgehog 3’

★★★

Opens Friday, December 20, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for action, some violence, rude humor, thematic elements and mild language. Running time: 110 minutes.

Review: 'Mufasa: The Lion King,' a prequel to a remake, is too busy maintaining the brand to tell a compelling story

It’s possible to return too many times to the same watering hole — as Disney does with “Mufasa: The Lion King,” a prequel to the 2019 computer-animated remake of the studio’s 1994 classic animated movie, a copy of a copy of a perfect original.

Director Barry Jenkins (“Moonlight”) and screenwriter Jeff Nathanson (who wrote the 2019 remake) introduce Mufasa as a cub, swept away from his parents (voiced by Anika Noni Rose and Keith David) in a massive flood. A long way downstream, he is pulled from the water by another cub, Taka — who wants to bring his new friend into his pride. 

Taka’s mother, Eshe (voiced by Thandiwe Newton), likes this idea, but his father, Osabi (voiced by Lennie James), is opposed — because Mufasa is an outsider and therefore worthy of suspicion. Osabi allows Mufasa to be raised by Eshe with the female cubs, but he must stay away from Taka, who is being trained to become the next king of the pride.

A new group of interlopers, a nasty pride of white lions, arrives on the scene with the goal of vanquishing all the other prides and being in command “wherever the light touches,” to borrow a phrase from the original film. How villainous are these white lions? Their leader, Kiros, is voiced by the Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen — that’s how villainous they are.

Eshe gets the adult Taka (voiced by Kelvin Harrison Jr.) and Mufasa (voiced by Aaron Pierre) away from Kiros’ attack on Osabi’s pride, and she makes Mufasa promise to protect his brother, who is the last of Osabi’s royal bloodline. But out in the wild, Mufasa’s innate courage and the skills he learned from Eshe — skills Taka and the other males in the pride never encountered — show him to be a more natural leader. 

When the brothers team up with a lioness, Sarabi (voiced by Tiffany Boone), the three find that working together is beneficial, as they follow a mystical mandrill, Rafiki (voiced by John Kane), to the legendary land of Milele. As the friendship among lions turns into a love triangle, Taka’s jealousy drives him to do something unthinkable.

This story — which borrows from “The Prince of Egypt,” “East of Eden” and a few other classics — is somewhat bolstered by a song score written by Lin-Manuel Miranda. The best songs are “Bye-Bye,” sung by the gravelly Mikkelsen when Kiros dispatches his prey, and “Tell Me It’s You,” a moving ballad sung by Pierre and Boone. 

Jenkins does what he can to generate some real emotion out of all this, including some “camera” movement that gives some of the action feel like a nature documentary. Jenkins, though, is restricted by both the technological demands of the computer-generated talking animals and the studio mentality that puts storytelling a distant second to corporate brand management. 

This is most telling in the movie’s framing story, in which Rafiki tells a cub, Kiara (voiced by 12-year-old Blue Ivy Carter), the story of Mufasa, her grandfather. These moments are notable, and not in a good way, for the wisecracks from the franchise’s comic relief, the meerkat Timon (voiced by Billy Eichner) and warthog Pumbaa (voiced by Seth Rogen) — which include winking references to Broadway version and the ‘90s ubiquity of the song “Hakuna Matata.”

(Blue Ivy Carter’s presence in her first movie role makes sense, considering her mom, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, returns to voice Nala, Mufasa’s future daughter-in-law. The fact that Beyoncé has exactly one line and still gets featured billing speaks to the power of the Bey-hive.)

“Mufasa: The Lion King” starts with a few seconds of audio from the original Mufasa, James Earl Jones, who died in September at age 93. Disney was smart to get the remembrance out of the way early, because this movie doesn’t need any reminders of when this franchise was really astonishing. 

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‘Mufasa: The Lion King’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, December 20, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for action/violence, peril and some thematic elements. Running time: 120 minutes.

Review: "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim" delivers amazing visuals in a so-so story of a woman at war

There are undoubtedly dozens of stories from Middle-Earth, the realm J.R.R. Tolkien created in his books, that could be adapted into films. 

So it’s slightly puzzling that in “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim,” the folks who keep Tolkien’s works alive on film — Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh are among the executive producers here, and their writing partner Philippa Boyens shares screenplay credit — have put their time and effort into a somewhat lackluster narrative.

Fortunately, this bit of Middle-Earth lore is beautiful in its telling, a deeply detailed Japanese anime look devised by a crew led by director Kenji Kamiyama, whose career began as a background artist on the classic “Akira” in 1988.

The narrator — who, it turns out, is Éowyn, a character from Jackson’s trilogy (again played by Miranda Otto) — explains that this story takes place happens nearly 200 years before what’s referred to as “the War of the Ring.” It begins with the king of Rohan, Helm Hammerhand (voiced by Brian Cox), facing a challenge by a rival, a Dunlending lord named Freca (voiced by Shaun Dooley), who covets Helm’s throne. 

Instead of a direct approach, though, Freca tries to negotiate an arrangement, where his son, Wulf (voiced by Luke Pasqualino), would marry Helm’s daughter, Hèra (voiced by Gaia Wise) — who, we learn, was a friend and fencing competitor with Wulf when they were kids. Hèra says she doesn’t want to marry anyone, and Helm refuses the deal because he doesn’t want Freca that close to the throne. Helm and Freca take it outside for a fistfight, where Helm’s one punch knocks Freca dead. Wulf vows revenge on Helm and his heirs: Hèra and her two older brothers, Haleth (voiced by Benjamin Wainwright) and Hama (voiced by Yazdan Qafouri). 

Years later and Hèra sees Wulf again, and he’s still determined to exact his revenge — teaming up with a rival army to take down Helm’s kingdom and take his crown. While armies battle, Hèra figures out Wulf’s plan and leads an evacuation of the capital city, Erodas, for a nearby fortress, Hornburg. Soon, Wulf’s forces are preparing for a siege to starve Helm’s people during a bleak winter. Through all this, Hèra proves that she’s not only the fastest rider but shows the king that she’s as fearsome a fighter as her brothers.

Though the script — credited to four writers, including Boyens — is loosely based on Tolkien’s work, a viewer may see other influences. For starters, Hèra, with her red hair and superior archery skills, is more reminiscent of Merida in Pixar’s “Brave” than anything else. The revenge motivation is understandable, but feels a bit simple compared to the complexity of what Jackson so admirably adapted from the trilogy.

Kamiyama’s visual sense raises even this simple story, combining an epic scale with an emotional intimacy for its characters — particularly with Hèra, who must not only fight for Rohan but battle her father’s stubborn insistence that his daughter needs protecting. 

“The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim” is a reminder that animation can do anything other forms of filmmaking can. Now Kamiyama needs a story that matches the grand spectacle of the format.

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‘The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim’

★★★

Opens Friday, December 13, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for strong violence. Running time: 134 minutes.

Review: "Queer" is an uneven adaptation of William S. Burroughs' weirdness, but Daniel Craig's portrayal of an aging lonely man is transcendent

On paper, the combination of director Luca Guadagnino and a book by William S. Burroughs sounds perfect — so it’s interesting that in “Queer,” sometimes Guadagnino’s lush visuals work with Burroughs’ drug-induced surreality and sometimes they don’t.

What does pay off consistently is the lead performance by Daniel Craig, who’s aging into a fascinating and emotionally complex actor in his post-James Bond career.

Craig plays Burroughs’ alter-ego, William Lee, an American expatriate living in 1950s Mexico City, hanging out in bars with other Americans (Jason Schwartzman appears as one morose pal) and indulging in his addiction to heroin. (Guadagnino’s sly use of songs by Kurt Cobain, though not in line with the time frame, fits the character’s languid, drug-fueled sensibility.) 

Then William spots a young American man, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), and considers how he might ask whether he’s queer. It’s a question where the reward, of finding an attractive new sex partner, is as great as the risk of being exposed as a homosexual.

studGuadagnino’s simulated psychedelic trip is like any other in one respect: The effect will vary from person to person. Some viewers may feel a connection to William’s hallucinogenic visions, while others will see a slew of disjointed images with no clear understanding of what the director and screenwriter Justing Kuritzkes (who wrote Guadagnino’s tennis drama “Challengers”) are trying to say.

As Guadagnino is puzzling out what he’s trying to say here, Craig takes command. He finds in William a tender, wounded soul, filling the void in his heart with drugs and whiskey and laconic stares at unattainable men. Craig turns “Queer” into a portrait of loneliness and longing that transcends whatever tricks the director wants to play.

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‘Queer’

★★★

Opens Friday, December 13, in theaters. Rated R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, strong drug content, language and brief violence. Running time: 137 minutes.

Review: "The End" plays in a post-apocalyptic world where the musical numbers turn absurdity into heightened emotional reality

The end of the world, as we know it, should not be a reason to sing — so the fact that the family that is riding out the apocalypse in director Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The End” does sing their feelings, in emotional musical numbers, adds to the absurdity of this strangely beautiful movie.

The movie takes place in what appears to be a rich family’s home, where well-appointed furniture fills every room and expensive paintings line the walls. We’re soon informed that this “home” is deep within a salt mine, and the family has lived here for some a while, as some sort of catastrophe is taking place on the surface. We aren’t told the details of how the family got here, other than the fact that the mom (played by Tilda Swinton) was pregnant when they descended, and her son (George Mackay) is now around 20 years old. 

Also living down there are the father (Michael Shannon), the mother’s longtime best friend (Bronagh Gallagher), the family butler (Tim McInnerny) and their in-house doctor (Lennie James). You have already noticed that these characters don’t have names — which is apparently by design, as it’s suggested that these are the last mother, the last father, and the last friend, son, butler and doctor left on Earth.

The family lives their life in a well-ordered routine. Mom regularly takes down artwork so the butler can repaint the walls. The doctor gives everyone their medications. And the son is ghost-writing the father’s autobiography, in which Dad highlights the wonderful work he did as the CEO of an energy company — rejecting the notion that his company’s refusal to acknowledge climate change may have led to the calamity that hs put them in this underground chamber.

One day, in the middle of this regular routine, something different happens: A young woman (Moses Ingram) makes her way into the family’s space. Mom and the doctor are adamant that the woman be forced to leave, following the protocol to reject strangers so they can stay safe. But Dad rejects the protocol and lets the woman stay — a decision that has far-reaching consequences, particularly for the son, who has never seen a female his own age before.

Oppenheimer is making his first dramatic feature, after a pair of heartbreaking and landmark documentaries — “The Act of Killing” and “The Look of Silence” — about the dictatorshop that ruled Indonesia for decades. Those movies took reality and amped the intensity to heartbreaking levels of unreality. Here, Oppenheimer finds the dial works the other way, and that ratcheting the unreality to 11 makes a movie that feels real even in its most offbeat moments.

Swinton and Shannon are nicely matched as upper-class parents for whom 20 years in a salt mine is just a more extreme version of what they did before: using their money as a shield to block out the problems outside their world. Mackay as the spoiled scion and Ingram as the first new person he’s ever seen juxtapose the diametrically opposed views of what’s real — thanks to his lack of experience with the outside, and her knowledge of the horrors up top. Together, these characters make “The End” a biting and melancholy parable of the struggles, particularly between classes, that threaten to destroy us all.

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‘The End’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, December 13, in theaters. Not rated, but probably R for violence and language. Running time: 148 minutes.

Review: 'Y2K' is a horror comedy where the jokes flow as much as the blood, as it fondly recalls '90s sci-fi and teen rom-coms.

Kyle Mooney has been one of the more conceptualist comedians ever to appear on “Saturday Night Live” (his “What’s My Name?” sketch, where he plays every part, is a great example). So it’s no surprise that his first movie as a director, the horror comedy “Y2K,” takes a smart idea and runs through its funniest permutations.  

It’s December 1999, and high-school dork Eli (Jaeden Martell) and his trash-talking best pal Danny (Julian Dennison, from “Deadpool 2”) are once again on the outskirts of social acceptability. For Eli, this means never getting to talk to his crush, popular girl Laura (Rachel Zegler). But when they learn there’s a no-holds-barred New Year’s Eve party happening, and that Laura has broken up with her community-college-going boyfriend, Danny encourages Eli to take the chance and tell her how he feels.

There’s a lot of talk leading up to the party about the potential problems of a computer glitch when the calendar turns over to the year 2000 (yes, kids, that was something we actually worried about) — but these kids pay it no mind. That is, until the clock strikes midnight, and suddenly all the electronic devices start turning into killers. Microwaves cook people’s heads. Electric shavers cut the jugular. A CD player spits out discs that embed into skulls. And the machines start rewiring themselves, combining into massive lethal robots.

The kids at the party either scatter or die. One group that forms to make their escape is led by Eli, along with acerbic stoner CJ (Daniel Zolghadri), punk skater girl Ash (Lachlan Watson), and, of course, Laura. They run into other people, including aged video-store clerk Garrett (played by Mooney) and, for reasons too weird to explain, Limp Biskit frontman Fred Durst (played by Limp Biskit frontman Fred Durst).

Mooney and his co-writer, Evan Winter, mine our obsessions with technology for some sharp humor — it’s hard to believe how many ways gadgets are made to kill teenagers — while also spoofing a previous generation of horror movies and teen rom-coms. (Casting Alicia Silverstone as Eli’s mom helps cement the movie’s ‘90s bonafides.) 

Mooney brings a biting humor and a well-honed sense of period nostalgia for everything from Taebo to Chumbawumba. He makes “Y2K” a movie that’s hilariously gory, smartly comic and surprisingly sweet, the very sort of movie that would play perfectly at a teen sleepover circa 1999.

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‘Y2K’

★★★

Opens Friday, December 6, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for bloody violence, strong sexual content/nudity, pervasive language, and teen drug and alcohol use. Running time: 91 minutes.

Review: 'Flow' is a gem of a movie, a wordless animated tale of animals breaking down barriers to ensure their survival

The artistry and emotion found in the animated adventure “Flow” is so breathtaking, and seemingly effortless, that it’s only in hindsight that you realize how big a risk director Gints Zilbalodis is taking in this brilliant example of wordless, universal storytelling.

It starts with a cat. The cat doesn’t crack jokes, or walk around on its back paws to simulate human behavior. It’s a cat, and behaves like one. The cat sleeps on a human bed, upstairs in a house surrounded by cat sculptures. This cat’s human, we surmise, is an artist. We also start to realize that this cat’s human, as well as all the other humans, are nowhere to be seen.

Something has happened in this world, of an apocalyptic order. That’s even more clear when a giant wave of water comes rushing toward the house, and the cat has to run to stay above it. The cat starts running alongside a river, trying to avoid a pack of dogs, until the river’s banks are also flooded. 

Eventually, the only hope the cat can find is a boat that floats by on the much higher waters. The cat seeks refuge, but soon finds it’s not the only animal on board. Soon the cat is joined by a lemur, a capybara and a heron — and these animals must, without the ability to speak, reach an understanding that they must work together to find a safe space. And then there are those dogs, who are still out there on the perimeter.

Zilbalodis, a filmmaker from Latvia, wears many hats with this production. In addition to being the director, he co-wrote the script with Matiss Kaza, co-wrote the music with Rihards Zalupe, and is listed as the movie’s editor, cinematographer and art director. Here, he creates a fully realized world, where the humans have vanished and the animals are — once again — trying to adjust to a new normal.

The computer-animated visual style is natural while being impressionistic enough to keep the movie out of the uncanny valley. The animals are fully realized as characters — you can understand their motivations and predicaments, even without dialogue — while behaving precisely the way animals would in these extraordinary circumstances.

“Flow” is a movie that you get completely sucked into as you watch it, then marvel at how it came to exist at all. It’s as pure and as specific as storytelling gets. 

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‘Flow’

★★★★

Opens Friday, December 6, in theaters. Rated PG for peril and thematic elements. Running time: 84 minutes.

Review: 'Nightbitch' is a solid, if sometimes obvious, satire of the constraints of motherhood — but Amy Adams' lead perfomance gives it bite

It’s been a minute since we’ve seen Amy Adams get to make a mark in a leading role — probably back  to “Arrival” in 2016 — so it’s a delight to see her inhabit the frazzled new mom in the satire “Nightbitch” with such full passion.

Adams’ character doesn’t have a name (she’s listed in the credits as “Mother”), which is part of the point of writer-director Marielle Heller’s adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s 2021 comic novel. This stay-at-home mom, who gave up a promising career as an artist to raise her toddler (played by Arleigh Patrick Snowden and Emmett James Snowden), has lost her sense of self-identity, between the “book babies” sessions at the library and endless cooking of hash brown patties for her son’s breakfast. 

She is wary of bonding with the other moms she meets — because she doesn’t understand why she should make friends with women whose only common denominator is having recently given birth. And she finds it difficult to make her husband (Scoot McNairy) understand what she’s going through, especially when he comes home from four-day business trips and doesn’t see why he needs to take on the parenting duties for a night.

And, to top it all off, Adams’ character notices she’s experiencing some weird physical symptoms — like the tuft of hair growing in the small of her back. If she didn’t know better, she’d think she’s starting to turn into a dog. This turns out to be a on-the-nose metaphor for her barely suppressed rage, and a way to dodge the million expectations of so-called “perfect” mothering. (Among other things, she buys a new dog bed, and is delighted to discover that her son falls asleep in it instantly.)

Heller — who gave Melissa McCarthy one of her best roles in “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” and directed Tom Hanks’ turn as Mister Rogers in “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” — gets great comic mileage out of the mother’s exasperation and her dog-provided liberation. She does tend to underline the point a little too heavily, with dialogue that sounds more like an op-ed than a comedy script. 

What makes the movie worth watching is Adams, who makes us feel the weight this mother is carrying — and the the exhilaration she experiences when she discovers this strange new superpower. With Adams leading the pack, “Nightbitch” has a bite as strong as its bark.

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‘Nightbitch’

★★★

Opens Friday, December 6, in theaters. Rated R for language and some sexuality. Running time: 100 minutes.