Sonic the Hedgehog 2

[Jon Dent]

Sonic 2 shows what happens when you bring back almost everybody that made the first one: more of the same. Not that this is a bad thing. I liked the first Sonic, and I liked this one.

Like many sequels, Sonic 2 tries to up the ante a bit with a bigger story that has more cosmic implications than the first one, but it still ends up hinging all on the way Sonic and his smart ass, chaos inducing personality plays off the other characters around him. Joining in the destruction are a new sidekick, Tails, and amusingly droll frenemy, Knuckles. Picture Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy as a smaller, red GCI creation and you get the idea.

Jim Carrey also returns, and if you can believe it he's even more over the top this time around. Unfortunately, some of the goofy charm he brought the first time is gone, replaced by an abundance of frantic contorting and funny voices.

Visually the movie is bright, colorful and a testament to the current state of CGI (of which there is A LOT). Outside of some funky looking water, snow and sand effects it all looks very good. Sonic and his pals have a wonderful three dimensional quality and merge well into the live action.

Sonically, the movie is also well done, with one minor exception: bass levels. Within the first thirty seconds you get a pretty strong, exaggerated thump from the LFE, and it doesn't let up at all over the following 120 minutes. I love me some low end, but Sonic 2 was a bit much, especially for a movie geared towards kids. Looking at the credits I see the sound team is the same one that worked on Godzilla vs Kong. I guess that explains a lot....

[Darin Steffl]

I haven't watched it yet but we had a great first night with it! Kids all seemed excited to watch it when they came in.

[Jim Cassedy]

The experience at my workplace was exactly opposite of Darin's . In fact ticket sales were so bad,
that after the 1st night, they've pulled a several of the weekend shows and I think they are only
running the bare minimum amount to meet some contractual obligation. Most of the shows that
have been canned were replaced with "Everything Everywhere All At Once" which I think is in its'
2nd week here, and is still bringing in good crowds. But Sonic- - not so much so.

[Darin Steffl]

Very weird! This is on track to be our best show so far since reopening March 2021! Two strong shows again today. The Lost City is our current #1 grossing since we reopened.

The Batman did horrible for us. We're a 7k population town with lots of young families so PG movies do best here.

[James Wyrembelski]

At least you didn't get stuck with Morbius like I did....

[Darin Steffl]

At least you didn't get stuck with Morbius like I did....

I told our broker Morbius would do bad here so we're skipping it. We don't really have anywhere to play it since we had The Batman, Dog, The Lost City, and now Sonic.

[Mike Blakesley]

We didn't take Morbius either. Sonic has done well so far (nearly sold-out last night, and sold out tonight). Our matinee tomorrow is about gone already too.

My wife and I tried to watch it today and we both didn't like it, so we quit watching after the first hour and a half, which turned out to be only forty minutes.

Seriously, this movie is about a half hour too long. There should be some kind of law that no kids movies are more than 80 minutes, unless they're Disney who is a bunch of sharks, but at least they know how to make an engaging kids movie.

[Darin Steffl]

Mike, how many seats at your Theatre? The most we've had for one showing was Jungle Cruise with 110 out of 200 seats since I bought this Theatre in March 2020.

We have been in the top 3 grossing single screen theaters in MN over the last 4 weeks but we haven't been close to selling out. Just wondering what's normal I guess.

I'd love to sell out a few shows sometime.

[Mike Blakesley]

We have 138 total but 44 of them are in the balcony which we don't allow kids under 12 into, so we weren't 100% full but the downstairs (94 seats) has been almost 100% for 3 shows this weekend.

Part of this is because there is a theater 45 miles from us that is closed for remodeling, so we get a lot of people from that town. When they reopen (with 3 screens) it'll cut us down some.

[Jon Dent]

I wish we had passed on Morbius and kept Lost City. Sonic 2 is doing great for us, Morbius is sucking complete air (nobody at the 1:00 today at all and Sonic 2 nearly sold out on the other side).

My 6 year old was enthralled.

[James Wyrembelski]

We did relatively well with Morbius on the first week, but good lord that second week drop was insane.

I was also a bit shocked to see Sonic had a 2 hour running time. Mike, I agree with the 80 minute law on kids films. Kids are getting restless and the parents want to go.

Im very happy to see good turn out for Sonic 2, but maybe I'm in the minority that the first one wasn't really any kind of stand out. I liked it, but it was rather unremarkable and I can't remember a thing from it despite having played it for 2 weeks. Perhaps pent up demand for family films is showing through Sonic? The forecast for Bad Guys isn't nearly as high, so it'll be interesting to see how it performs.

[Jon Dent]

I think there's been pressure built up for a decent family movie that isn't available on streaming. We did a week of Hotel Transylvania 4 and it didn't bring in much, but it's also been streaming for months. Sing 2 was the last good option and that was four months ago now thanks to Warner and Disney pulling their animated films from the lineup.