Sonic the Hedgehog

The Movie Snob goes slumming.

Sonic the Hedgehog  (C).  How can I, The Movie Snob, give this ridiculous, soulless movie based on a video game such a high grade?  It’s about a blue, hobbit-sized space alien who looks vaguely like a hedgehog, acts like a caffeinated 10-year-old, and runs so fast that time seems to stop when he reaches top speed, for crying out loud!  Hear me out: cute alien Sonic (voice of Ben Schwartz, Renfield) is hiding out on Earth near a small Montana town because bad space aliens want to capture him and harness the energy he can generate.  But then Sonic accidentally causes a huge blackout, setting sinister government forces (led by a scenery-chewing Jim Carry, The Number 23) on his trail.  So he quickly befriends a good-natured local police officer named Tom (James Marsden, Enchanted), and Tom agrees to drive him to San Francisco where, through a dire mischance, Sonic’s little alien rings that would allow him to escape from Earth have been lost and landed atop the Transamerica Pyramid.  It’s all preposterous, but Marsden has an easygoing charm, and I laughed a few times at the silliness and one-liners, so why not give it a C?

The Conservative Sensibility (book review)

A new book review by The Movie Snob.

The Conservative Sensibility, by George F. Will (2019).  This big book (538 pages) is, I suppose, a summing up of famous pundit George Will’s political thinking. His thesis is that the Founders devised the Constitution based on the assumptions that human nature is basically fixed and always contains degrees of ambition and acquisitiveness—thus, the separation of powers. But starting around the beginning of the 20th century, the progressive movement took over and remade the government based on new assumptions: human nature is essentially malleable, modern conditions demand government-by-expert, and we can safely do away with the separation of powers. For his part, Will agrees with the Founders, deplores the rise of the administrative state, and urges the federal judiciary to take a more active role in promoting liberty and restraining the executive branch.  He even has kind words for the Supreme Court’s notorious Lochner decision of 1905!  And he’s not above making the occasional humorous remark, such as when he refers to one of his previous books as “a book read by dozens.” As the book goes on, he also wanders over other topics such as education, foreign policy, and perhaps most interestingly the question of whether only religious people can really be conservative.  (Describing himself as an “amiable, low-wattage atheist,” he naturally answers the question “no.”)  The book is a little rambly and a little repetitive, but I still enjoyed it pretty well.