Knuckles Review: A Shameless Sonic Cash-In

Contains minor spoilers for "Knuckles"

There was a time, long before each movie studio operated its own streaming service, when television spin-offs of their blockbusters weren't required viewing to understand the plot of each big-screen sequel. The need for cinematic universes has killed the concept of cheap cash-in series, typically destined for Saturday morning children's television, as every single release is part of a larger puzzle; stand-alone adventures that a casual viewer can dip in and out of without needing to track how this affects a larger overlapping narrative are a thing of the past. In this sense, the Paramount+ miniseries "Knuckles" feels like a breath of fresh air, a throwback to a simpler time when beloved characters could embark on child-friendly adventures in between movies, which you wouldn't feel forced to watch so you could fully grasp the plot of the next one.

Which isn't to say that "Knuckles" is particularly good, so much as it is my platonic ideal of what a spin-off series in this vein should be — a side dish cooked up to ensure fans won't remain hungry until the main course arrives, but flimsy enough that you can safely elect to skip it and still get full from "Sonic the Hedgehog 3" on its own when it arrives in theaters this Christmas.

Marketed heavily on the fact it takes place between the second and third films in the "Sonic" franchise, it's almost immediately clear that this series exists solely as a side quest with no bearing on the main plot. Its relatively lower budget means that, by episode four, there are entire episodes where the CGI echidna — voiced, once again, by Idris Elba — appears for less than a couple of minutes in total.

Aiming to mirror the odd couple relationship between Sonic (Ben Schwartz) and human best friend Sheriff Tom Wachowski (James Marsden) in the film series, here Knuckles teams up with Tom's Deputy Wade Whipple (Adam Pally) through a need to find and train someone to be a warrior just like he is. But if you think that means fighting bad guys, well, you'd be wrong. Wade is a championship bowler, and after a humiliating loss, wants to team up with Knuckles to compete in a tournament in Reno so he can get revenge on a former partner (Julian Barratt) and reunite with his estranged father (Cary Elwes), who is the biggest pro-athlete in the bowling world. If a cursory glance at this fever dream of a plot leaves you thinking this entire story could have taken place without Knuckles even being there, you would be absolutely correct — it frequently feels like unproduced scripts for an underdog sports sitcom have been rewritten to add a stern CGI character and a B-plot about two baddies (played by Kid Cudi and British comedian Ellie Taylor) trying to kidnap him in the background.

Knuckles may be the eponymous character, but he functions as a sidekick to a human protagonist in a way Sonic never did to his non-CGI counterpart, factoring in so little in the second half of the series that it becomes oddly reminiscent of "Kangaroo Jack," the 2003 comedy which disappointed an entire generation of children. That romp in the Australian Outback was initially filmed as an R-rated crime comedy, but disappointing test screenings inspired producers to double down on a hallucinatory interlude with a kangaroo, reshooting the movie to make it child-friendly by featuring more animal antics, but still nowhere near enough to justify naming a movie after a mischievous marsupial. The show "Knuckles" feels like it was initially destined to be a nostalgic throwback to the sports comedies of the '90s, with the world of professional bowling inviting immediate comparisons to the Farrelly Brothers' "Kingpin." It's no surprise that the moments where it follows through on its comic potential are when it plays into the inherent ridiculousness of the genre's tropes, from over-the-top montages to deeply unprofessional commentators, even if the ways in which it parodies them have already been done to death in better sports comedies over the years.

An alternate reason for the sidelining of "Knuckles" could be that this was initially positioned as a straight-to-streaming feature, hastily rewritten as a miniseries because even the streaming era hasn't washed off the stink historically associated with a straight-to-video release. In the middle stretch, entire episodes feel like they exist for the sake of bulking up the story, although this is where the show takes its biggest, riskiest swings — swings that don't entirely hit the mark, but offer some satisfaction in the stubborn refusal to play it safe and conform to franchise expectations. In one episode, Wade gets kidnapped, passes out, and dreams up an entire bowling alley rock opera with the tactile practical effects you'd find in a vintage Michel Gondry music video. In another, Wade brings Knuckles home to his family for Shabbat dinner, where he childishly bickers with sister Wanda (series standout Edi Patterson, of "The Righteous Gemstones" fame) and, in a demented dialogue exchange that I still feel like I hallucinated, has his mother (Stockard Channing) declare Knuckles to be spiritually Jewish because his people were also victims of a genocide.

I have no idea what a child sitting in front of the TV hoping for more adventures with a beloved video game character would make of it all, but in a peculiar way, I almost admire the "Kangaroo Jack"-style cynicism behind the project. Every streaming show is greenlit on the curve of whether it'll persuade non-subscribers to part with their money to journey beyond the paywall, and there's no better assurance you'll get viewers than expanding upon a hit franchise. After the false security of the first couple of episodes, which feature the return of Sonic and Tails (Colleen O'Shaughnessey) in addition to prominent antagonists who wouldn't be out of place in the movies, the show deviates from the fantasy universe almost entirely to tell a story about a man's fractured relationship with his father. It's genuinely a shock to discover that John Whittington, a co-screenwriter on the second movie, is the co-creator here, due to how much it feels like the work of a disgruntled writer working the system to get their unproduced screenplay made via the back door.

Because of this, I have an odd fondness for the show, even if there are only a couple of episodes in the middle where it doesn't feel like a compromised project. It's not exactly good, but it is exactly what a spin-off should be: a side adventure that never once threatens to tie in with the ongoing story in the movie franchise it's nominally a part of. You won't need to see this to sit through "Sonic the Hedgehog 3," and that's exactly how it should be.

All six episodes of "Knuckles" hit Paramount+ on April 26.