Sonic Mania was Sonic fans showing how to make a Sonic game.

Now Sonic Mania is also Sonic fans showing how to make a Sonic movie design.

Sonic Mania is truly the game we deserved.

In my experience, people are inconsistent when it comes to how they view professional critics. When the critics' opinions agree with their own, they'll nod their head and say "See, I told you it was good." When the critics' opinions do not agree with their own, they'll say "The critics are all a bunch of hacks that shouldn't be listened to."

I've seen thousands of movies in my life. I've seen plenty of movies that got panned by critics. The critics were right: they weren't good movies. I thought a lot of them were entertaining in a "dumb fun" sort of way (though many also failed even in that regard), but they were not "good" in any objective sense. I've seen plenty of movies that critics universally praised. I did not like all of them because the subject material or genre just wasn't something I was in to, but from a purely artistic standpoint I could not object to those films. There's nothing wrong with liking a mediocre film or disliking a good film. Artistic quality and entertainment value are not necessarily correlated. But film critics by and large judge things from the standpoint of serious art criticism, not from the general audience standpoint of "Will it entertain me?" (and, increasingly among some people, "Did it meet my desires and needs as a fan?" and "Did it offend my anti-SJW sensibilities?"). They're more likely to judge a film on the strengths of its script, screenplay, acting, cinematography, effects, set & costume design, and other things that go into making a film a film, with the entertainment value being a tertiary concern at best. When it comes to judging the objective artistic merits of a film, I tend to trust the critics. If the Sonic movie gets panned but gets a good audience reception, then I would assume it's likely an entertaining film, but not exactly top-shelf cinema.