Renfield (2023)

Director: Chris McKay

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Nicolas Cage, Awkwafina, Ben Schwartz

Have I Seen it Before: Well, sure. Scenes of it have been pulled directly out of Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931), and Lammle knows I’ve see that one plenty of times.

Did I Like It: And that’s one of the points where I’m a bit stuck on the film. The original Dracula is a tragically… and it really pains me to say this… boring film. It’s not its fault, it;s barely a sound film, so can’t rise too far above a recorded stage performance. You can read all about my thoughts of that film in the review for it, but as charmed as I am by inserting Hoult and Cage into the scenes from that film, it is another example of a film lionized beyond what it had earned on its own merits.

The film’s other flaws to tend to be its most memorable parts, unfortunately. There are a number of pleasantly diverting jokes throughout, but as I type this, I am having pronounced difficulty coming up with any that weren’t already in the trailers you’ve already seen. Worse yet, those gags are about the only thing propping up. an organized crime subplot that exists only to make sure that the film fills a feature-length runtime.

And yet, there are a few things to make this a moderately worthy weekend diversion. Cage is having so much fun chewing—often literally—the scenery that it becomes even more of an unfortunate tragedy that he never ended up playing a Batman villain, and that the mere prospect of him playing Superman was doomed to fail before it ever began. Beyond that, the makeup work on Dracula himself is genuinely fun, taking him from an injured animal all the way through to his “full power” as it were.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022)

Director: Jeff Fowler

Cast: James Marsden, Ben Schwartz, Tika Sumpter, Jim Carrey

Have I Seen it Before: No. I even took it upon myself to re-watch the original film. Isn’t it wild that we now have entire film franchises which have existed only in the time of COVID?

Did I Like It: I probably already covered most of this in my review of the first film, but: I think the mythos surrounding Sega’s mascot was always, and will continue to always be a complete and utter bore. The game was a faster Super Mario Bros., which certainly has its place, and reaching for those Chaos Emeralds adds a fun challenge layer to the game. But Knuckles? G.U.N.? Don’t even get me started on Shadow the Hedgehog, which has to be the dullest extension of a video game since the right Pong paddle.

The first film shakes most of that loose in favor of an admittedly wobbly human-best-friend story, but it was all serviceable, and to see Jim Carrey reach back for his inner-Riddler from <Batman Forever (1995)> was a delightful treat, made all the more heartening by the through that it might inspire the youth of today to go seek out the Bat-films of yesteryear.

This film only has Carrey continuing that schtick. Sonic’s best human pal (Marsden) is here, but his storyline is so perfunctory that what scant logic we have here would not have been impacted if both he and Sumpter were completely excised from the film.

Where does the film find the material to fill out the rest of the film while working with those defciencies? In Emeralds, and Knuckles (Idris Elba, who I hoped paid off a mortgage here), and Tales (Colleen O’Shaughnessey) and Shadow. I didn’t go into this film expecting much, but somehow it delivered everything I didn’t want.

Weird that a film would make me long for the restrained wonder that is Batman Forever, but here we are.

Sonic The Hedgehog (2020)

Director: Jeff Fowler

Cast: Ben Schwarz, James Marsden, Tika Sumpter, Jim Carrey

Have I Seen it Before: Sigh. No. I’ve been resisting seeing it because I ultimately wasn’t aching to see a live-action Sonic movie (more on that later) and it felt like the time might come again fairly quickly wherein I could go catch it in a quick matinee. I eventually caved and watched it on demand.

Did I Like It: You know, kind of?

I’m a longtime player of the video games (or at least some of them), I can probably walk the Green Hill Zone, Act 1 in my sleep and get over 200 rings for my troubles. So, I’m not coming to the series blind, but I’ve never seen the point of any of the extended mythology surrounding the characters. The moment Knuckles the Enchida (which is a thing) arrives, there are far too many characters circling the series that are essentially repainted versions of the original blue streak*.

Thankfully, the movie eschews almost everything found in the nearly thirty years of history with the games. Aside from a cameo by Tails in a mid-credits scene and a brief prologue featuring one of the Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole (2010) (I think, honestly the opening is pretty weird) there is little mythology in sight, in favor of an agreeable abusing buddy road picture. The Chaos Emeralds are nowhere in sight, and some fans may blanche at that, but I maintain that we’re all better off. 

Ben Schwarz is always a welcome presence, and it’s nice seeing Jim Carrey return to the kind of schtick that made him famous. We probably don’t need two or three rubber-faced tirades a year, but a visit once in a while from a character not terribly removed from the 

Sonic as a creature doesn’t fully work, but one can imagine a large part of that is because of the film’s famed delays in production after we all collectively cringed at the unholy furry thing that greeted us in the trailer. Honestly, I think people would have gotten used to the new version of Sonic if he had been brought to full gestation, but we have what we have, and the fans are not rioting. That’s fine.

*Yes. I know Tails, Knuckles and the rest (the names of said characters escape me at the moment) all have slightly different approaches to and abilities in both the 2d and 3d worlds of the games, and no, I’m not terribly interested in discussing them. That’s kind of the point.