MPAA Rating: PG
Reel Rating: 4 out of 5 reels
Video game adaptations have a notorious reputation, no more so than the Mario Brothers franchise. While these plumbers—who first appeared in arcades forty years ago—have had one of the most successful home console game of all time, their single live action film is among the worst ever made. Yet, after the success of the Pokémon films, Nintendo finally made the gamble again, and this time it paid off.
The Super Mario Bros Movie had a relatively low bar to clear: a fun, ninety-minute playtime for eight-year-old boys. By this measure, it succeeds by (ahem) leaps and bounds. By any other, it doesn’t do much else.
This film has one of the most thinly veiled and haphazard plots of any picture in recent memory. Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) are twentysomething brothers still living with their parents while trying to start their own plumbing business in Brooklyn. One day, after botching a job, they find a series of mysterious hidden pipes under the city and are unwittingly sucked into a bizarre alternative universe.
This world is populated by a series of magical lands, all under threat by the villainous turtle Bowser (Jack Black). Luigi is kidnapped by Bowser, so Mario teams up with Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy), leader of the Mushroom Kingdom, to rescue his brother and save the world.
If this story sounds like the imagination of a group of fifth-grade boys high on Smarties dust, it is. Bowser lives in a fortress made from an active volcano. There’s also a Penguin kingdom with an ice castle and snowball catapult. Mario can eat a mushroom that turns him into a tanuki, and he flies by rotating his tail. Bower’s unrequited love for Princess Peach, including a piano solo, sounds like the invention of someone who has no idea how romance works. The Princess is vaguely attractive but approachable, although her damsel-in-distress motif has been significantly weakened.
Like The LEGO Movie, there is a joyful feeling that the audience is being treated to an inside look at the child in all of us.
In this sense, the story doesn’t really matter; it is an excuse to get to the next action scene. The best of these is the go-kart sequence, in which Mario and his friends must escape a gang of koopas on the notorious Rainbow Road. Clearly taking a page from Mad Max, the evil turtle karts are blinged out with spikes, weapons, and other steampunk accessories. Fortunately, Mario has played enough of his own game to utilize shells, bananas, and launch pads to his advantage. This sequence made the game come alive. When I saw a defeated koopa transform into the dreaded blue shell and chase after Mario, I screamed “NO!” so loud that I woke up my two-month-old. Any man of my generation will understand the pure communist injustice of having that despicable item dispatched against your hard-earned 1st place.
As far as cinematic production is concerned, Mario is…okay. The story is dismal, the dialogue decent, and the voice acting is good, although Bowser is far more Jack Black than himself. My wife noticed there was a glaring plot hole that could have easily been filled. Several times Bowser is updated by his stooge Kamek on Mario’s actions and whereabouts, but it is never established how he receives this information.
Meanwhile, an anthropomorphic mushroom named Toad insists on traveling with Mario and Peach to help in their quest. His loyalty and attachment are odd, especially to these strangers. It seemed fitting that he would be revealed as a spy for Bowser, an easy plot twist that would show some basic screenwriting knowledge. Yet, it never happens. It’s simple to conclude that this is just a glorified commercial—albeit a fine and fun one.
My oldest son first heard about this movie last September and has since been counting down the days. When we attended the screening, my brood all brought their toys and plushies. They cheered and laughed the whole time. When Donkey Kong appeared, my second oldest son stood up and loudly pounded his chest gorilla style to show his devotion. In their world, it was one of the greatest movies ever made. And, for them, they are right.
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Thanks for your review, Nick! I found this review interesting, too. Did you or your family notice anything like this?
https://www.abc.net.au/religion/the-casual-nihilism-of-super-mario-bros-movie/102206540
Mr. Olszyk, I appreciate your review and many positive comments about the Mario Movie, but I question your statement: “a fun, ninety-minute playtime for eight-year-old boys”.
I’m willing to bet that a lot of 20, 30, and even 40, 50, and 60-something “boys” AND “girls” will be enjoying this movie, or at least, becoming like children again for 90 minutes.
And perhaps some, possibly many of these older viewers will pick up on subtle, new-age, gender-bending messages in the film–although really, now, fairy tales and fantasy literature pieces have always had “messages” that become fodder for those attempting to police the dissemination of “new age teachings” before they turn children into practitioners of black magic and devil worship. Indeed, even C.S. Lewis and his Narnia chronicles have been considered “questionable” in some Christian circles.
But what I would like to talk about is your comment about the age of the Mario Movie viewers.
My 20-year old nephew is a gamer. He spends several hours a day (or night) gaming. At the moment, he is big-time into the Harry Potter games, although he has never read the books.
He was diagnosed later in his childhood with Asperger’s Syndrome–my late husband and I had questioned his various personality traits since he was an infant, but his parents and grandparents told us, “He’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with him except stubbornness. He gets that from (name a relative who passed away).”
Well, it turned out that we were right. If only he had been diagnosed as a toddler or even in kindergarten–before his self-esteem and confidence were virtually destroyed by idiotic Evangelical Protestant teachers who dealt with his difficult personality traits by making him sit in the hallway at school, sometimes for the entire school day, without even a book to keep him company. When they learned about his diagnosis, they denied that there is such a thing as Asperger’s.
Even before his diagnosis, my late husband and I decided to do what we could, and so when our nephew was 5 years-old, we got him involved with figure skating, which he seemed to enjoy, mainly because our daughters and my late husband were figure skaters. He did well, but as the sport became more demanding, he, like many other children, decided to stop skating. We had no problem with this.
We also enrolled him in Huntington Learning Centers, and this helped him in school. He was amazing at math, but terrible in anything involving language, writing, etc. But he improved.
What he REALLY loved about these various activities was coming to our house afterwards, having pizza and Mountain Dew, and playing video games on our home computers (my late husband worked for IBM). We didn’t bother him, but we would stay in the room with him and when he called us over to see something “cool,” we exclaimed in amazement, and admired his skill in earning high scores.
It’s not surprising that our nephew’s confidence increased with this encouragement. We loved him with an “action” love, and he loved us in return.
My beloved husband died in December of 2020 of COVID. He was only 62 years old. I had COVID, too, but my only symptom was a loss of taste and smell for a few days. My husband, on the other hand, developed pneumonia (“COVID gunk” according to the nurses), and spent 30 days fighting for his life in a hospital before passing away. No visitors allowed, not even his wife of 41 years. For a few weeks, he was able to talk on the phone with me daily, for just a few minutes (it was hard for him to breathe). Then we were able to communicate via text–he actually continued working from his hospital bed for a few weeks. But then he worsened and I didn’t hear from him, although I received a beautifully-written note from him on a Christmas card that was dated a few days before he died.
Our priest told us that “if the end seems likely, make sure to call the hospital priest and ask him to administer an Apostolic Pardon” He described it as a “trip to heaven!” (Our priest is an Air Force Chaplain, now retired.)
The day after Christmas, I got the call that the end was imminent. My younger daughter and her husband were in town for Christmas, but my older daughter, at my urging, had stayed in St. Louis with her boyfriend’s family for the holidays. When we called her, her “boss” volunteered to drive her halfway up to Rockford, IL, and my son-in-law drove like a maniac down I-39 and I-55 to pick her up at a gas station in Bloomington. They made it back in time to be there when my husband passed–of course, I believe that he was “kept alive” until my daughter arrived. We did get to be with him for a few moments, although he was not conscious. But I think he somehow knew we were all there.
Our family, like so many others, was devastated, especially my husband’s parents. And my nephew–well, devastation is an understatement. We are all Christians, and my husband and I and older daughter are Catholics (and as of last weekend, my son-in-law and daughter are Catholics!), and our priest was amazing, as was our parish–we were able to have a funeral in the actual church (nave)–the first funeral held in the church after the COVID closures were lessened. The funeral was well-attended by people shocked that a fairly-young, handsome, active man could be brought down by this awful virus.
Well, a week after the funeral, my sister-in-law called me and told me that my nephew told her that he hated thinking about me being all alone, and wondered if he could come to my house and play some games and get some pizza and just keep me company.
For the next few years, this game and pizza time became an every-other-week occasion that both of us looked forward to. He didn’t just play the games–he explained them to me–everything he was doing, all the characters and plots, how the game was created and who the creators were, and all the “buzz” surrounding the game. Of course, Mario Brothers was one of the games, although he had an arsenal of many other games.
I don’t like playing video games (I’m terrible at it!), but I LOVED hearing him describe the characters and plots. I love reading and have a library of more than a thousand books, many of which are “young readers” written for pre-teens, teens, and college students. I myself have written a mystery series for kids about a synchronized (ice) skating team. And I write songs (Christian), none of which have become big hits, but kids love them.
Most of all, though, I enjoyed being with my nephew and discovering his many good traits now that he is grown-up, mainly his compassion for others, something that not all autistic people have, or for that matter, something that not all non-autistic people have.
It’s been a few years now since my husband’s death, and my nephew and I still get together while he plays games (and we eat pizza!). He will graduate from high school (finally–COVID really took a toll on kids and their schooling). And he seems like he is excited about pursuing a career as a train engineer (he has loved trains since he was a toddler).
I hope this story isn’t too rambling. My point is to remind you that many people besides “8-year olds” play video games, including Mario Bros-it has a lot of appeal. I worked in a hospital lab for 41 years, and there was a fairly good-sized number of lab techs who would get together and play after work and on weekends. I’m guessing that they were excited to go see the Mario Movie.
Again, I did enjoy reading your review and appreciate your many positive comments about the Mario Movie. Thanks!
A solid review for sure. But I would say any 30-, 40-, or (yes) 50- year old Nintendo fans well-versed in decades of Super Mario and/or Mario Kart games like, ahem, yours truly, will have just as good a time as their children! It’s a colorful, vibrant, fun movie, great for all kids (4+ years old and up?), that can also be enjoyed by adults who still remember their bouts with Bowser back in the 1980’s and ‘90’s.