Because I can't point to any one obvious thing that Sonic did differently.
I can. On paper these movies seem like they're trying to follow the 'cartoon character in the REAL WORLD' shovelware formula beat for beat but I've realized that they actually don't. There are some things they did differently, maybe even accidentally.
One of the fastest ways to kill your movie is to remind audiences that they're watching a movie. Almost every 'cartoon character in the REAL WORLD' movie inherently does this. 'Cartoon character in the REAL WORLD' gets into hijinks that make messes and cause migraines for the boring jerk whose apartment they hide in. The joke is always that the cartoon characters are out of place and don't know what they're doing. Somebody in the industry thinks it's funny. But even if it were funny, the joke is only a joke if you continuously keep in mind that there is a real world that the characters should not be in. It's reminding audiences that they're watching a movie. It's idiotic filmmaking.
With Sonic, the joke is that he's fast. It's different, somehow. You still get reminded all the time that he's out of place but you're given something to focus on that keeps you anchored into the movie. He's fast in his world too. His weirdness is defined without reference to the real world.
It's also Robotnik. It's hard to find Sonic too out of place when Jim Carrey's standing there being a genuine live action cartoon even before his transformation. Thanks to him, the REAL WORLD in these films is internally defined as cartoony without reference to Sonic's presence. Instead of a cartoon world and a boring real world, it ends up being two cartoon worlds that form a tonally consistent universe.
These films could have been full cartoons like Sonic X and they would make complete sense. For once, being live action is just the format, not the plot.
