The following article contains spoilers for Sonic the Hedgehog 3, so beware if you haven't caught the fun family flick yet!
If you've been keeping up to date with the 2024 movie schedule, you probably know about the hit release Sonic the Hedgehog 3 which has earned a solid review from CinemaBlend and easily sprinted past the competition at the holiday box office this weekend. While it continues the story of the famous speedy hedgehog and his team, there's one particular dance sequence that had me laughing, and director Jeff Fowler told me how they brought it to life --specifically with the help of Jim Carrey.
In Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Dr. Robotnick (played by Jim Carrey) meets his long-lost grandfather, Professor Gerald Robotnick (also Carrey), and when the two of them don special suits in order to sneak through a laser-filled room, of course, a totally hilarious dance sequence breaks out. I was so enamored by the scene that when I spoke with director Jeff Fowler, I asked him about how it came together.
Apparently, it was actually Jim Carrey's idea in the first place, as he told CinemaBlend:
That's one of my favorite scenes, as well. That idea, the credit goes to Jim. He had done in the first film that one little scene in his mobile lab where he puts on the music and does a little dancing and then gets interrupted by Stone. In one of our very early conversations on movie three, he said, 'I want to dance again.' And I said, 'Great, let's do it.' So if we were going to do it again, we were going to go big and literally double down on the dancing and have Ivo and Gerald there doing a duo. But it was so much fun to design that, to plan it. We had an amazing choreography team. We had amazing dancers. Everyone just brought their A-game and just delivered an amazing sequence.
Honestly, I'm not surprised it was Jim Carrey's idea to bring the dance sequence to life as a callback to earlier in the franchise. His moment in the first film was super funny, but adding a dance team to choreograph, an intense set design and having two Carreys performing at the same time made it all the more over-the-top—so much so that I'd willingly pay to see the movie again just to watch this moment. I mean, Carrey is notoriously hands-on with his roles, so it makes total sense he would up the ante for the third film.
Carrey's ideas for Robotnick and his grandfather have paid off. Prior to the film's release, some critics said Jim Carrey stole the show from Shadow (Keanu Reeves) and that he was really one of the biggest draws of this movie for his "epic performance." Plus, Jeff Fowler has said cool things about working with Carrey on set before and how he always wants to work hard and deliver in his roles, and this time around, he delivered twice as much hilarity.
The film's ending doesn't give us a ton of hope for Robotnik (or his grandfather) returning, but Carrey did previously say he was retired and then returned for Sonic the Hedgehog 3, so never say never. Maybe we'll get lucky enough in Sonic the Hedgehog 4 to see Carrey pull off another fun dance sequence.
