The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Let's-A-Go (Somewhere Else)!
By Chris Knight
Rating: D
Ready, Player One? Cos I’m not!
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is Hollywood’s second attempt to make a feature film out of the video game franchise that is Mario. The first, released 30 years ago next month, was live action and featured Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo as Mario and Luigi, plumbers, all-around do-gooders and world-savers.
This one presumably required animation technology to advance to the point where we could convincingly turn an eight-bit moustache into a 2K computer-generated render. Welcome to the future.
Princess Peach, Mario and Toad take in the scenery in The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
It also required exactly one writer, which is quite remarkable. Given the gruel-thinness of the plot, I assumed it had either been (A) assigned to ChatGPT – model 3, not the fancy new version – or (B) farmed out to a quintet of scribes who cooked it up over three-martini lunches.
But no. Matthew Fogel, whose other credits include Minions: The Rise of Gru and The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, is the sole culprit. Paging Script Dr. Mario!
It’s a very, VERY linear storyline. Mario and Luigi, voiced by Chris Pratt and Charlie Day, have started a plumbing business that is not going well. Desperate to prove themselves, they arrive at a water-main break in Queens, but find themselves sucked into a wormhole/pipe and deposited in the Mushroom Kingdom.
Luigi is captured by Bowser, a kind of middle-aged mutant ninja turtle, voiced by Jack Black. Mario sets out to rescue him, aided by the mushroom-oid Toad (Keegan-Michael Key), Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) and, after a little convincing, Donkey Kong (Seth Rogen).
To keep the romantic tension sufficiently taut, Mario is mildly attracted to Peach, and Bowser has his heart set on marrying her (for reasons that I won’t reveal because the film never revealed them to me, either). Honestly, I’ve seen more character development in an episode of Scooby-Doo.
So, the storyline is not quite enough to fill 92 minutes of screen time, but fear not! Co-directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic (Teen Titans Go!) make sure scenes are filled with references from the four corners of the Mario-verse, whether it’s Jumpman, power-ups, Koopas, Goombas, Mario Kart, Rainbow Road or the adorably nihilistic Luma (my favourite bit in the movie, because it gave voice to my dark feelings as I prayed for it to end).
Fans of the franchise will no doubt thrill to playing spot-the-reference, and may need repeat viewings if they gotta catch ’em all. (And yes, I know that’s a Pokémon reference – you never heard of crossovers?) Kids too young to be fans will probably still enjoy the tale in all its colourful simplicity.
To anyone outside this weird Venn diagram, there isn’t much to recommend The Super Mario Bros. Movie, although musicologists may enjoy listening to orchestral versions of some of the video game series’ sound effects and theme music. Meanwhile, to those who insist that Pratt’s voice isn’t right for the character of Mario, I advise you to imagine what it would-a sound-a like if-a he spoke-a like-a this for the entire-a movie. Capiche?
As is often the case with a not-so-great film, I can report that I wanted to like it more than I did. But I just couldn’t.
Maybe it was the lack of anything of interest in the dialogue, exposition or character motivations. Perhaps it was the various creatures – mushrooms, penguins, Koopas, etc. – clearly vying for the role of “next new Minion,” given that one of the companies behind the film was Illumination Studios of Despicable Me fame.
Or it might have been something as simple as the repeated use of slow-motion for (not very effective) comedic purposes. Honestly, if I had a quarter for every time the movie turned down the speed while a character yelled “Mamma Mia!” – I’d probably go and hit the arcade.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic. Starring Chris Pratt, Charlie Day and Anya Taylor-Joy. In theatres April 5.