Knuckles Blu-ray SteelBook

I was psyched to be able to review Knuckles, the Paramount+ miniseries and spin-off from the Sonic the Hedgehog movies. This time, the once-villain-but-now-directionless-hero-echidna Knuckles, was to be the focus.

Knuckles has always been my favorite. When I was a kid, I remember there was a Sonic & Knuckles expansion pack for the Sega Genesis, so if you already owned the main Sonic games, you’d stack two video game cartridges on top of each other, and you could now play, say, Sonic 2… as Knuckles! It was the exact same game, but instead of just zipping and spinning through the levels, you could glide and punch your way through them. It was so cool.

I was excited to see where a Knuckles-focused storyline could take us. What wild adventures could he go on? What kind of trouble could he find himself in, and get himself out of? Sadly, Knuckles decides to saddle Knuckles with a plot that’s basically Kingpin for kids. He gets the sidekick treatment in his own show, with limited screen time, in a plot about a bowling tournament, that’s too long by about 90 minutes. This should have been a brisk 80-minute movie, not a three-hour-long miniseries.

Knuckles (voiced by Idris Elba) finds himself unable to adjust to the calm lifestyle of Earth. He’s a warrior. Sitting around, relaxing, goofing around with pals Sonic and Tails isn’t something he can do, so he sets himself out on a warrior’s quest to help someone else attain the status of a warrior. He takes Wade Whipple (Adam Pally) under his wing, as an apprentice. Wade believes the bowling alley is where he feels most like a warrior, so that’s the trajectory of the adventure they choose to embark on: To make it to Reno, NV, enlist in a bowling tournament, and to help Wade overcome his daddy issues.

This being an action-adventure miniseries in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, there are also some bad guys thrown in for good measure. There are a trio of villains out to steal Knuckles’ power and strength, there’s a bounty hunter after Wade and there’s all sorts of bumps in the road on the way to Reno—both figuratively and literally.

The problem is that it’s all pretty dull. Knuckles has a distinct straight-to-VHS feeling. The rubbery overacting from the adult cast reminds me of the 12^th sequel you’d find on tape at the video store, which is so tired at this point that it just crams as many derivative formulas into it as it can and sees what sticks. Not much sticks here. The main difference between something like Knuckles and Honey, You’re Not Gonna Believe This But Somehow I Shrunk the Kids Again is better production values. Knuckles, to its credit, does look and sound great.

Adam Pally seems like a perfectly lovely person, and he’s been funny outside of this, but making the character of Wade the actual main character of Knuckles is a strange, bad choice. Knuckles is such an interesting character. He’s a determined warrior with a tragic backstory, he’s a fish out of water in a world he doesn’t understand and he’s determined to always do the right thing, even though he has no idea what that is sometimes. To Knuckles “the right thing” is pitting a mailman and the family dog against each other in a pit of death. That’s funny material right there!

Wade, on the other hand, is a sidekick whose screen appearance can be best summed up with, “a little Wade goes a long way.” If Wade were a spice, just a dash would do. The creatives behind Knuckles, for reasons I will never quite understand, decided to serve him up as the main course and the results are irritating. Adam Pally does his best with the material, but he’s just not given much to work with.

Knuckles may work best for real, real young kids who are amused by the constant yelling and screaming and seeing adult actors mug for the camera. In a way, it feels like a live show you’d see at a school assembly. The cast is talented, (Cary Elwes, Stockard Channing, Rory McCann, and Christopher Lloyd just to name a few), and are clearly game for the shenanigans. There are moments that hint at a better show. There are gags that have the potential to be very, very funny and come so close, but the show won’t let the joke land. The joke is set up, there’s a punchline… and then aftershocks to the punchline that go on and on and on and contribute to this monster 3-hour runtime. A decent trim of Knuckles to a reasonable length might be just what the doctor ordered to allow the cosmic echidna to shine.

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray
Knuckles comes to Blu-ray courtesy of Paramount in a Steelbook case with some very fun artwork. The back cover is a spoof of Game of Thrones, with Knuckles sitting atop a throne made of implements of destruction. The video presentation is in 1080p high definition that is pleasantly clear and sharp, and the audio mix is in Dolby Atmos immersive surround. There are a number of special features to peruse that dive into the production on the series. All episodes and special features are on a single disc.

Knuckles’ video presentation is clear, bright and colorful. The echidna’s fur is clear and detailed. When his fists light up into balls of flame, the effects are rendered nicely and display a gorgeous color palate. Where the show really shines and has the most fun with its cinematography, is in the various bowling sequences—particularly a cosmic bowling sequence with gaudy glow-in-the-dark paint contrasting the dark, dark blacks and blues of the overhead neon lighting.

For the most part, however, and this is true of most of Knuckles, the visual presentation is, by and large, perfunctory. There’s little passion to it. Every shot is lit adequately, but there’s very little sense of fun outside of the above-mentioned bowling sequence and a couple of fantasy sequences. The disc itself is free of any sort of technical issues—I saw no color banding, no artifacts, or anything of the sort, it’s just that all of this technical expertise was in service of a show that looks lackluster. It never looks bad, it’s all just sort of bland.

By far, the best, most fully realized aspect of Knuckles is in its Dolby Atmos TrueHD sound mixing. Unfortunately, the show is not chock full of creative action sequences that allow this mix to shine very often, but when it does, it does so very well. The mix reminded me, appropriately, of a video game—and considering Sonic and Knuckles’ history as Sega characters, this was great. During certain action sequences, when our villains are blasting at our heroes with pulse rifles, the source of the blasting shifts from front to rear speaker depending on the placement of the camera and it does this flawlessly. Effects pitch frequently overhead, creating a nice dome of effects to envelop the listener.

While action sequences aren’t as frequent, soundtrack selections are, and the soundstage makes great use of its various retro 80s and 90s hits that populate the show’s story. No matter the carnage raining down or the musical selection blasting and setting the stage, dialogue is always clear and favored.

Knuckles has a few special features to occupy fans after they’ve exhausted the episodes on the disc. There aren’t a ton here, but some of them provide a fun, behind-the-scenes look at the show’s production.

• Cast Featurette (HD, 1:53) A short featurette with a few lines from many of the show’s cast members talking about how excited they were to be a part of the series.
• Working With Knuckles (HD, 1:03) A very short, one-minute featurette with cast members explaining what it was like to work with the humorless, very serious Knuckles.
• This or That (HD, 1:03) Another very short featurette with cast members choosing this or that—good or bad, strength or cardio, etc.
• Knuckles Impressions (HD, 1:03) Cast members do their very best impressions of Knuckles, much to Idris Elba’s delight
• Gag Reel (HD, 7:30) Probably the best feature on the disc, many of these bloopers are significantly funnier than the actual show, and seeing the puppet placeholder used to stand in for pre-CGI Knuckles is inherently funny to see.

Knuckles is not great, but it might be a good fit for very young kids who can’t get enough of the Sonic movies. It’s pleasant to watch, full of fun effects and bright, vibrant color, and plenty of camera mugging from the cast going over-the-top. For everyone else, making your way through it might be a chore. The technical specs, like the HD video presentation, are clear and bright, and the Dolby Atmos sound mix is fantastically assembled. This Steelbook release Knuckles is ultimately For Fans Only.