The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)
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The Super Mario Bros. Movie Movie Review
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a 2023 animated action adventure film directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic and starring Chris Pratt and Jack Black. It is one of Illumination’s best movies and one of the finest video game adaptations released so far.
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“There’s no escape;
the only hope is the sweet relief of death“
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With help from Princess Peach, Mario gets ready to square off against the all-powerful Bowser to stop his plans from conquering the world. First off, I am a huge Mario fan. I’ve played the majority of games in the mainline series and I loved almost all of them. Thus, I was extremely excited for this movie and for the most part it succeeded my expectations.
This film was never going to have the greatest story out there as the games themselves are slim in that regard, but by and large the script was surprisingly solid here. It had its issues, but it was serviceable to the characters and for the intended audience, who are the fans and the kids. This is a film that was primarily dedicated to the fans of the franchise and the extensive fan service could get excessive at times, but as a fan I loved it for all those reasons as it was a love letter to both Mario and Nintendo fans.
There is one big gripe that I have with this feature and that is the overwhelming action. Undoubtedly, the action set pieces are a spectacle as they were superbly executed, rich in detail and a thrilling ride throughout. But still, too often the film resembled your typical Illumination product – a thrill ride that is so colorful and so frenetic that only children could fully appreciate its audio-visual overload.
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Another problem was the decision to put so many Nintendo properties into one feature film. This somewhat backfired especially in the third act as the film is rather short at just an hour and a half with the beginning set in Brooklyn also being quite long that the end result felt rushed and overly convoluted, particularly for non-fans. There was ultimately no need for Donkey Kong and Mario Kart to be represented in this first feature, though both largely worked, especially the extremely fun and colorful kart racing sequence.
On the other hand, the characterization was one of the biggest strengths of the film, well, with the exception of the titular hero himself. In the games, Mario was this over-the-top, silly little guy who would utter inherently endearing lines of dialogue and/or enthusiastic screams and yells. However, here the character was nothing of the sort. This Mario is not fun or funny at all, he has no Italian accent whatsoever and he just felt bland and uninteresting. Pratt’s uninspired performance coupled with the problematic screenplay led to the hero of this story being the weakest part of it at the end of the day.
But every other character was a huge success. As a big fan of ‘Luigi’s Mansion’, I loved the nods to that franchise and Luigi himself was an utter delight. Charlie Day was perfectly cast in this role and highly believable. His voice is so high and so fun that he should be cast much more frequently in animated voice roles. Luigi here was the much more fun part of the Mario Bros. team and their sibling relationship was sweetly endearing.
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Princess Peach and Bowser are the standouts. Peach is actually much more memorable and proactive than she ever was in the games. Anya Taylor-Joy was wonderful and the character got to have some terrific action scenes throughout the flick. But Bowser is absolutely the MVP here. Jack Black’s voice was incredible and so nuanced, the character was both an imposing villain and a goofy, slightly creepy dude who is obsessed with Peach. Every single of his scenes was phenomenal and hopefully we get to see more of him in the future.
The Koopas are a lot of fun and those penguins were hilariously incompetent. Donkey Kong was memorably over-the-top, but his inclusion was ultimately unnecessary. Toad is very funny and a great comic relief while Lumalee was just a joy to behold. Well, joy is not the proper world as this Luma is actually this nihilistic star creature obsessed with darkness and death. The juxtaposition of its cheerful demeanor and Goth behavior made for one instantly iconic cartoon comic relief. The humor in this movie is actually terrific, but it was too sporadically used and I needed more of it.
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The Super Mario Bros. Movie truly has gorgeous CGI animation. The character designs are on-point and faithful to the source material while the visuals are both polished and extremely colorful. The Mushroom Kingdom looked breathtakingly beautiful and so inviting. The many references to all the different creatures from many different Super Mario games made for a great Easter Egg hunt. The world building was surprisingly fantastic and the epic, grandiose feel of the entire experience was a pleasant surprise.
I appreciated how they used the power-ups within the story, though at times the movie was silly because of those game conventions that are in the video games important but in the film they fared the opposite. But the screenwriters were fully aware of it, so they winked at the audience through some self-parodic humor that was excellent. They chose to honor the most iconic games in the series, mostly focusing on the very first game and ‘Super Mario 64’, but how they failed to make use of ‘Super Mario Galaxy’ was such a shame as that game had the best world and story in the series by far.
The score is mostly very good and they did include so many iconic themes from numerous games in the franchise, though they slightly altered and/or modernized some of those songs to varying results. There is one song in the film sung by Bowser and it was this very fun, funny and memorable rock ballad. It was so good that it made me wish for a full musical treatment for this movie. The dialogue was actually stupendous for a film like this, though the pacing was all over the place. They crammed so much into this film that the end result is almost incoherent for non-fans and too rushed and complicated even for fans. But it brought a smile to my face as it was both funny and highly adventurous, thus it is very easy to forgive it for its numerous flaws.
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The Super Mario Bros. Movie was largely a success. It has its flaws – the action is overwhelming, the audio-visual overload was typical for Illumination, and they crammed so many Nintendo franchises and characters into one feature film, making it feel too rushed and overly convoluted for non-fans. But this is mostly made for the fans of the franchise and it was an utter delight to see so many Easter Eggs from the games. I would have included many more elements from the Galaxy games myself, but the world building is truly stupendous, the various creatures from numerous games are present here and how power-ups factored into the story was so much fun. The animation is vibrant and colorful while the score honors so many iconic themes from many different games in the series. The plot is surprisingly solid for a movie like this, but it is the characterization that was the absolute highlight with the exception of Mario himself – he was bland, uninteresting and way too lifeless for a guy who is supposed to be goofy and over-the-top. But everyone else was a delight – Princess Peach was pleasantly proactive and cool, Jack Black’s Bowser was quite complex and immaculately realized, Charlie Day’s Luigi was perfectly cast and so endearing while Lumalee stole the movie with its juxtaposition of dark goth personality and infectiously joyous energy. Overall, it has its flaws, but this is still Illumination’s best movie and one of the strongest video game adaptations that we’ve received so far.
My Rating – 4
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