The Super Mario Bros.
When I was a child in the ‘80s, I remember playing “Super Mario Bros.” on the first Nintendo. It was at a friend’s house he was my first buddy to get an NES and when I went home, I dreamed about it. The goofy plumber who jumps has been with me ever since. My boys have all played through the brilliant “Super Mario Odyssey” more than once, so I’ve passed along my love for this franchise. But Mario has come a long way since a disgraced Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo starred in what is still one of the worst movies ever made (“The Super Mario Bros.”), and yet this new movie doesn’t represent that creativity at all.
This new animated blockbuster from Illumination is by far its most soulless film to date, it plays like ChatGPT made it after being fed data and images from the games. It’s like “The Chris Farley Show” of family entertainment mistaking making references to something that was “awesome” for actually making a movie. And it’s one of the most desperate animated films I’ve ever seen. “Remember this?!? Remember how much you liked it?!? Please like it again!” (I really wanted/want something to spark imagination back in me as when I played that first game or fun back into me as across multiple Nintendo platforms.) Instead, we got this trailer pillaged movie. As hollow as a trailer, as devoid of anything creative or ambitious.
Mario and Luigi deserve better.
“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” opens in Brooklyn with plumbers Mario (Chris Pratt) and his brother Luigi (Charlie Day) trying to get their business off the ground floor. Some Nintendo Easter eggs in these background scenes should elicit mild smiles from people of my generation, and there are structural inspirations throughout such as an early shot where Mario and Luigi race through the city side scrolling style, like in the earlier games. There’s even a nod to The Odyssey on a bookshelf in Mario’s room, implying we’re about to go on a hero’s journey and reference that incredible Switch game. What follows doesn’t live up to either of those.
In a way that makes little sense, Mario and Luigi find an enormous chamber of pipes under Brooklyn, get sucked into them and wind up in the Mushroom Kingdom which is being threatened by Bowser (Jack Black), the villainous dinosaur who can breathe fire. The bad guy has found his Super Star, which will allow him to make his final assault on Princess Peach (Anya Taylor Joy) and everyone else in her kingdom including Toad (Keegan Michael Key). But it turns out Bowser doesn’t just want power; he wants to make her his bride too, singing some really uninspired songs about his love for her. How on Earth does a movie like this land rock talent like half of Tenacious D as the voice of Bowser and not let him off a couple clever Bowser tunes? This film has many mysteries.
He reaches the pipeline that takes him directly to the dark lands and into the custody of Bowser, a silly move that benches him for an hour, while Luigi is dropped. Mario meets Princess Peach, who introduces him to power ups. So all those question mark cubes get their due, as Mario grows, shrinks, turns into a raccoon and what have you. Eventually they recruit Donkey Kong (Seth Rogen), race down Rainbow Road and save the day not a spoiler if you’ve ever seen a movie.
Fans of this movie will say from the rooftops that the scripting for something called “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” doesn’t need to be its strong point and there are some good settings in terms of design. I liked what they did with Donkey Kong Country, structurally speaking; also, the Rainbow Road “Super Mario Kart” sequence is well directed. But why do fans of a franchise that has inspired this much love over generations have to settle for storytelling at its absolute minimum?
There are so few actual decisions made in this film’s construction; it’s just a 92-minute movie made up of visual and character reference points cobbled together. Take a risk. Do something anything! It got me thinking about the fun spin-offs we could have had Like if there was a “Mad Max: Fury Road” version of the “Mario Kart” sequence, which gets its energy out of nonstop motion? Or one that unpacks like “The LEGO Movie,” i.e., is more sharply aware of its references and world-building something that even incorporates the player like that movie does at the end? I swear almost anyone who’s played something like “Odyssey” could come up with something more inventive. Hell, almost any 10 minutes of that game is more creative.
It doesn’t help that every voice performance here is uniformly mediocre too Chris Pratt can be charismatic with the right material, but he sounds like he pounded this out in three hours in a voice studio. Charlie Day has such an expressive voice, and the movie barely uses him. Seth Rogen is always a welcome presence, and at least he seems to be having some fun. I wish I was too.
With our nostalgia craze merging with the power of Nintendo and Illumination, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” feels too big to fail which means we’ll get a sequel, which means another cycle of the debate of “critics vs. fans,” etc. I am both. And I want a world where the people who make movies for fan bases as devoted as this one do not take that fandom for granted. This isn’t over by a long shot I suspect we will get a ton of films from the NES universe, “Donkey Kong Country” is coming any day now, right? but we need creators who don’t just see these games as products to be referenced but as foundations on which new ideas can be built. That ‘80s kid who dreamed of Mario deserves it.
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