After the Paramount logo (the stars replaced by gold rings flying towards the iconic mountain) and the Sega ident, Sonic The Hedgehog 3 rather ironically segues to a large credit for Neal Moritz’s production company, ‘Original Film’. It’s not very often a production banner throws unintentional shade on the film that follows, but there is very little that is novel in Sonic 3’s subsequent 109 minutes. Director Jeff Fowler’s inoffensive, all-too-familiar third adventure for the Blue Blur is probably the pick of the bunch, but this is still the kind of low-hanging fruit — endless quipping, bland moralising, dance routines — meted out by every bog-standard animated kids’ flick since the turn of the century.

The big new element here is the introduction of vengeful villain Shadow The Hedgehog, voiced by Keanu Reeves, unsurprisingly channelling John Wick rather than Ted Logan. Teased in a sting at the end of Sonic 2,...