The Super Mario Bros. Movie

I grew up a Nintendo kid. We didn’t have a console for the longest time, but we eventually got a used NES. It came with a ton of games, including the plumbers’ first three games. Super Mario Bros. 2 (the US version) was my personal favorite at the time, but eventually Super Mario Bros. 3 took the top spot, and spawned an adoration of platformers which persists to this day. At friends’ houses we often played Super Mario World (on SNES), and later the suite of Mario sports games. My partner and I will still pop in Mario Party 3, Mario Golf, Mario Kart 64, and Mario Tennis. And even though I don’t play many video games any more (Mario or otherwise), I keep tabs on it through friends and podcasts. Point is, if this movie is going to be the most cynical version of itself, I’m in the target demo. I grew up with the games, still play them, and will get many references.

The trickiest part is: what story do you tell? Mario has always had the barest actual plot, apart from rescuing the princess. And even that barely counts, since she’s always in another castle. The most popular Mario games are from an era where video games largely weren’t focused on the story, so if they’re going to try to resonate with the adult viewers, there isn’t an obvious choice. That’s not necessarily a bad thing! It’s tricky to find something which will satisfy all its masters, but there’s opportunity there, too.

In The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) are two plumbers living in Brooklyn. When the city suffers a huge leak, they delve into the sewers to find its cause, only to stumble across a pipe which transports them into the weird and wild Mushroom Kingdom. Luigi lands in the domain of the evil Bowser (Jack Black), from which Mario must save him with the aid of Toad (Keegan-Michael Key) and Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy). And along the way maybe save the Mushroom Kingdom.

The plot is about as cookie-cutter as they come, but there are a few nice twists. Notice that it’s Luigi who needs saving, not Peach. Bowser’s motivation is a bit of a tweak to the standard formula (although it will be recognizable to those who are Very Online). Neither makes a dramatic difference, but they’re a nice touch.

I also do like the way it handles their voices. An entire movie with Pratt speaking in that over the top “Italian” accent would have just been obnoxious. It works for the games since the Bros are mostly reacting to stuff and saying very little. But making it a marketing strategy works out well. And you can hear each of them has a (admittedly faint) Brooklyn accent.

And much of the score is good. Some of it is pop music tracks, which whatever. But I’m talking about the incorporation of various Mario game music. It’s got a drama to it, but as someone who still listens to “Smashing…Live!”, I appreciate that. That’s maybe the most the nostalgia worked on me, as those sounds will jump out to me anywhere.

But much of the rest of the film just didn’t work for me.

It wasn’t hot garbage; it’s hard to achieve that status without actually trying something. Say what you will about the 1993 attempt, but it’s weird. It’s ambitious. It’s hard to be so hated otherwise.

But that’s not the same as being good. This one was boring, uninspired, and not particularly funny. I’ll be honest, it did get a few chuckles from me, but I can’t for the life of me remember how. The character models were all ripped right from the console, so everything looked exactly as expected. The Mushroom Kingdom design had some neat aspects, such as traveling everywhere by pneumatic tube. But so much of the aesthetic was decided for them. I’m gonna guess Nintendo stipulated how the characters had to look, which combined with modern audiences insistence on “accurate” adaptations in as many ways as possible, means the filmmakers probably didn’t have much leeway.

And yeah, the plot is incredibly thin. To the point that Peach makes Mario complete an obstacle course for her to allow him to tag along, and she brings him despite his failure, and her own competence, and her not needing or wanting help. Yet she’s open to him coming from the instant he shows up. They don’t do the “start out hating each other and grow together” cliche thank god. But he hasn’t proved useful yet, and they don’t have particular chemistry, so her quick acceptance makes no sense. It’s like she read the script and saw that he was coming anyways, so why bother?

A lot of the film feels like that. Things just happen because the movie needs them to, character motivation be damned. Even worse, a bunch of elements of the film feel like they’re just there to make older fans say “I get that reference!” For example, at the beginning, Mario and Luigi are having a conversation in a diner, and there’s a dude behind them playing a Donkey Kong cabinet, who’s very clearly Jumpman. Which is fine; I actually kinda like stuff like that, where you’d have to notice it. But what grates on me is when they call attention to it, by having him actively interrupt their conversation in the same goofy accent. Many of references call attention to themselves like that. An example of one done well is later in the same scene, Luigi’s phone rings, and his ringtone is the GameCube music logo. So they’re capable of it, and just weren’t always confident in it. Which is a shame. I do wonder how those play if you’re unfamiliar with them, such as young children would be. Do they stand out as confusing, or do they blend into the background?

I think the thing that frustrates me most is the lack of theme and message. Of course, that’s technically not true, it just feels like it is. There are two that I picked up on: parents not supporting you, and loyalty to friends and family is important. They’re two limp ideas. It doesn’t have anything really to say about them, it simply raises them. And its failure to really develop them or carry them through the plot and other characters means they feel pasted on rather than integral. Mario doesn’t feel like he’s motivated by a need to make his parents proud, we just know he’s sad they don’t support him. And the loyalty angle similarly barely comes up, except in the most superficial way.

Finally, there’s just a bunch of questions raised by the world. Not the minutia of “how does such and such work?”. Bigger things like whats’s the deal with the pipe between the two worlds? If Peach is the only other human to cross over, what’s it doing there? If Brooklyn and the Mushroom Kingdom are directly connected, why does the one have magic and the other doesn’t? Wouldn’t there be some bleed? How did Bowser come to power and command an army, when he’s very clearly not a Koopa? There’s little exploration of the world or its characters, in favor of showing you as much of the setting as possible, to increase the chance you recognize something.

There are worse kids movies, sure. But this movie isn’t anything. It has nothing to say, and will leave your head the moment it’s over. And don’t kids deserve better?