I don’t think The Super Mario Bros. Movie is just the most anticipated animated movies of the year; I think this is one of the overall most anticipated films of the year.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a fun flick for families and Nintendo junkies alike. The film is based on the original Nintendo game “Super Mario Brothers,” and it tells the origin story of how the Brooklyn brothers Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) end up in the Mushroom Kingdom. They go against Bowser (Jack Black), join up with Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) and Toad (Keegan-Michael Key), and embark on a whole journey together.
The water main in Brooklyn is busted, and as they go below street level, they fall into a utilities room that seems to have been abandoned for quite some time. They find a mysterious tube, walk into it, get sucked through this magical portal, and end up being separated. Luigi ends up in the Dark Kingdom, while Mario ends up in the Mushroom Kingdom. Mario says, “Hey, I gotta find my brother,” and he meets Toad. Toad says, “Oh, you should talk to the princess.” So they go meet the princess, and she says, “Oh, we’re about to be destroyed by Bowser, and I need to go find another army, so let’s do a journey together.” It’s a simple story line but like a good plumber, it gets the job done.
The thing I appreciated most about this film is that it didn’t offend my nostalgia. In today’s world, that apparently has to be said. There have been so many movies that reimagine the original source material for modern audiences and end up turning it into something that isn’t even close to what I grew up loving. Or even worse, they use this as an opportunity to lecture me with the subtlety of a frying pan getting smacked over my head.
I don’t appreciate it, but this wasn’t that. Rest assured, you can go into The Super Mario Bros. Movie and realize that they really did try to keep everything together. They tried to keep the characters kind of the same. If I had kids, I would take them to this, and it would just be a fun, light-hearted time at the movies. It’s a little long, but overall, a positive experience.
The creators of this film really expected basically everybody going into it to be at least at a basic level of Mario understanding. You don’t have to be a fanatic who has played every game; even just watching your siblings play through one of the original games is enough. The filmmakers expect you to know about the characters and the worlds. They expect you to be overjoyed with all of the Easter eggs they throw into this, (and believe me, there are a lot of Easter eggs!). Coming out Easter weekend—how poetic.
In a way, the movie feels a bit contained. It felt like the writer (Matthew Fogel) had a list of all the worlds, characters, and major memories and aspects of the games that he wanted to include and basically pieced them all together. Kind of like one of those junior prom invites where they take all the candy bars, make a message out of it, and put it on a poster board. Like, “I would feel like a ‘Hundred Grand’ and there would never be any ‘Snickers’ as we walked in together for the junior prom.” I mean, all the words make sense, but that’s just not how we talk, you know? It kind of felt like that while watching it.
It did not necessarily feel forced but just lacked a lot of natural flow to the story. I would say it was 100% true to the lore of the games, which is good but also the safe thing. I’m sure they had the heads of Nintendo looking down on them like, “Mess this up, and we will crush you.” But going back to the junior prom invitation, it just kind of lacked cohesion and felt like a check-box storyline.
I think they were kind of going off what the The LEGO Movie did, which totally worked for them because it’s LEGO. It’s like what they do—they throw all the LEGO in a box, and whatever storyline comes out is what comes out. They kind of tied everything together with the live-action ending, which they didn’t have with this. Nintendo had already been down the live-action route with Mario once before in the 90s, and must have decided, “No, we’re not doing that.”
I’d say all of the characters completed a story arc in a satisfying way, but if you have played the games, then it was also pretty predictable. But at the same time, the animation was done in such a way that there were times where I felt genuine suspense. I got totally caught up in the score as well. I feel like the composer had so much fun taking some of these core memory melodies and making them more thematic and theatrical. He did a great job, and I was highly impressed with that. It was a fun feeling every time, once again, nostalgia.
Every couple of minutes, I felt like Chris Pratt did a good job with his voice acting. It didn’t sound overtly like Chris Pratt. He tried to have some type of a character voice, so you didn’t really think, “Oh, that’s Chris Pratt,” when he’s talking, which is so important, especially for such an iconic character. You don’t want to be looking at this character thinking, “That’s Chris Pratt.”
It was a similar feeling with Bowser. I didn’t quite know who it was at first, but then when I saw in the credits that it was Jack Black, I was like, “Oh yeah, of course it was Jack Black.” With Bowser, I felt like they did a good job at setting up the boss-level expectations of him at the very beginning. He just comes in and destroys stuff, but I felt like toward the middle, they played more toward the kiddos with a more jokey Bowser. I don’t know if I liked that or not. It definitely left you with the impression that this guy’s crazy.
Then there was Seth Rogen playing Donkey Kong. I’m just going to say I’ve never been a huge Seth Rogen fan, but now I’m over it. He is the epitome of Seth Rogen playing Donkey Kong, who is also trying to be Seth Rogen, and I just don’t like it.
Now, Princess Peach. There were rumors that originally the screenwriter was trying to make her more of a boss woman or boss girl to the point where it was almost her taking over the script and becoming the main character of the “Super Mario Brothers” movie, which Nintendo was not a fan of. I appreciated that they stepped in and said, “No, we’re not going to do this, and we’re going to leave Peach as she is.” But the thing is: she is a bit of a boss girl in the fact that she basically has no flaws or weaknesses.
When you’re creating a story, you don’t ever want any character to be only one-sided and only have strengths. I felt like she only had strengths, to the extent that they were almost afraid to give women weaknesses at all. There’s a give and take to every relationship, and if one person has all the strengths and isn’t the mentor, then it’s just like, “Why am I here?” If the other person is perfect, then why don’t they just do it?
The filmmakers did a good job of making sure Peach didn’t take over the film, but I still feel like they could have done better by giving her a need for Mario. In the story of the games, you are always trying to rescue the princess. But apparently, in the negotiation, she’s not going to be the boss girl, but she’s also not going to be saved. They can’t have her actually be in Bowser’s captivity and need to be saved. Instead, they put all the weaknesses on Luigi, making him incompetent in all things. They don’t give him his moment until the very end when they say, “Good job, you stood up for something.” But they didn’t build it very well. Everyone needs to have strengths and weaknesses. Everyone needs to be needed. They had Luigi be the one that needed to be saved, while Peach is like, “Fine, I’ll come along with you,” which is not how the story goes.
In the end, they weren’t 100% true to the lore and the story suffered slightly because of that. But overall, the voice acting was good. You’re watching this movie, and you see all these different things like level one, level two. You see so many Easter eggs, so for someone who is just a die-hard Nintendo junkie fan, this is going to be wonderful and exciting. Even for someone who is just a casual fan or a fan from childhood, it’s enjoyable.
★★★1/2
Tags: nintendothe super mario bros. movie
