The Super Mario Bros. Movie - Movie Review

Critics Score - 7 of 10

General Audience Score - 8 of 10

Kids Score - 9 of 10

It’s finally here. The movie we’ve all been waiting for since May 28th, 1993 when the live action Super Mario Bros. dropped into theatres and sent audiences everywhere running for the hills. Here we are, almost thirty years have past and we finally get a modernized, digitally animated adaptation of these classic video game characters and a host of their friends. The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a fun, colorful and fast paced adventure that kids will go bananas over. This film is an easy watch, it flies by at just over a hour and a half, but the closer you scrutinize the film, story and aspects of the filmmaking, the more the cracks beneath the surface begin to show. Most general audiences, parents and general audiences, however, will be able to overlook these flaws and have a blast with Mario and company on their quest to defeat Bowser. But the film skews heavily toward the kiddos and not as much towards the older generation that played the original NES games growing up, although it does have plenty of throwback characters, songs and moments. If you’ve got little ones, chances are you’ve already watched this movie and will many more times for years to come, if you haven’t, there’s still time to catch the new and improved video game adaptation of The Super Mario Bros., in their big screen Movie.

SYNOPSIS - This tale of an eight bit character that became larger than life starts with his nemesis, no not Donkey Kong (he’s a good guy now), but the evil horned turtle creature Bowser. The sequence from the movie trailer plays out immediately, Bowser and his floating lava mountain enter the ice world of the penguin kingdom, he’s in search of the ultimate star power that will let him rule the world. The cuddly blue penguin army unleash their fury of snowballs upon Bowser, but he’s not easily deterred and smashes down their castle entrance to steal the star and take the entire penguin nation captive, suspended in cages above a sea of molten lava. Right away the visuals are striking, even with Pixar and James Cameron working tirelessly to keep us on our heels, the animation and the rainbow colors the film injects into every frame, like a Skittles commercial on crack, really make this film pop visually speaking. The next scene is a Super Mario Bros. Plumbing commercial, we see the Brooklyn based Mario & Luigi fixing overflowing sinks and saving the day for anybody with stopped drains. But as the digital camera view pulls back out of the TV screen, we see the brothers are in a restaurant, congratulating each other on their commercial, which they spent their life’s savings to make. But also in the restaurant is their former boss, his uniform name says Spike, who mocks the plumbing duo and asks if they’ve received even one call after they left his company, establishing the brothers as a down and out couple of guys just trying to make it.

That evening they see on the evening news that the city is experiencing a water main break and Mario says, “This is our chance, destiny is calling”. To tell them what exactly? Guess we’ll have to wait and see. As they go down into the sewers to try and fix the water main emergency, like any good plumber would, they eventually fall and smash through a wall into a secret room with some of the cities oldest water piping. While looking around, suddenly Mario finds he’s by himself, Luigi has disappeared into a large green pipe, leaving only a wrench behind. Mario walks into the pipe and within a few moments, he’s sucked into a wormhole warp of some kind, one of the first demonstrations of the impressive visuals, Mario and Luigi tumble through galaxies of multicolored billowing cloud formations. As they spin down the interstellar invisible pipe hand in hand, Mario reassures his brother with a smile that everything is going to be alright, as long as they’re together. But of course they’re suddenly ripped apart, Luigi gets flung onto a path that spits him out into a black and dead forest with lava streams while Mario is shot out into a world full of mushroom, some might even call it a Mushroom Kingdom. As Mario meets new friends then begins his training to get Luigi back, he must gather the forces of good to fight off the star wielding Bowser to save the day, yada yada yada.

As a film critic, it falls upon my lot to scrutinize the film, despite the fact that audiences everywhere seem to enjoy it or the fact that my children yelled and giggled with delight through the duration. But I will start with the visuals, the film has absolutely stunning animation, even though it’s no Avatar Way Of Water, the gorgeous and crisp visuals combined with the vibrant colors and contrasts the films employs makes this one of the most impressive animated films I’ve seen in a while. Unfortunately many of the other aspects of the movie didn’t live up to the animation’s standards. The screenplay and dialogue were subpar, some of the exchanges between characters were mind numbingly simple and irritating. Which brings me to the voiceover work. Chris Pratt was fantastic as the clueless but lovable Emmet in The Lego Movie, but here he was mostly annoying in his effort to impersonate an Italian. His accent was rough, and as the bumbling Mario, as he tries to get the handle on being a hero, Pratt’s flatline voice adds little to distinguish himself from the rest of the characters. Anya Taylor- Joy as Peach was fine but her voice was a too deep compared to the squeaky high pitched voice you’d associate with the pink dressed princess that some of the games use for her. But the work that Jack Black puts in as the piano playing Bowser was a highlight of the film, his voice performance, along with his original song Peaches, will live on in infamy. Sadly, at least by comparison to most of Pixar’s films and even some others like most of The Lego films, I found this effort from Illumination Studios wasn’t terribly funny, at least not for adults. The exception being Bowser and a side character Lumalee, an adorable but depressed blue flame star, from the game Super Mario Galaxy, we’re both delightful when onscreen. Unfortunately, the original score was underwhelming, with some old game themes sprinkled into a mostly new but generic sound mix. It also utilizes some classic 80’s songs which were mostly fine, but when Mario starts training and “Holding Out For A Hero” cues in the background, it induces some serious eye rolling. Despite my rants, there’s a fine time to be had with Mario and Co., but don’t get your hopes too high, this one won’t be counted among the great animated films and can’t touch some of the recent classics like Inside Out, Spiderman Into The Spiderverse or even The Lego Batman.

SUMMARY - With a massive box office draw so far, it’s clear that audiences young and old can get hooked on the brothers and kids especially will line up over and over to see these characters. The bar wasn’t set very high by the previous installment but possibly only time will tell if The Super Mario Bros. truly make it to the flagpole in their new Movie.