Dir: Jeff Fowler. Starring: James Marsden, Ben Schwartz, Tika Sumpter, Natasha Rothwell, Idris Elba, Jim Carrey. Cert 15, 122 minutes.
Sonic the Hedgehog’s “gotta go fast” catchphrase apparently applies to film production schedules, too. We’d barely had time to process the existence of his first film before a sequel had been greenlit, which arrives in cinemas this week just two years later. It is impressive, though, for a franchise that nearly capsized itself before the first film had even come out – when an early trailer revealed that its cobalt blue, erinaceous protagonist now looked like a human in a furry morph suit. The redesign cost $5m (£3.8m) and added five months to the film’s production. And although the final product was essentially just a riff on the live-action Alvin and the Chipmunks, it appealed enough to audiences (or, more likely, children in the audience) that it made more than $300m (£228m) at the global box office.
