The ratings for The Super Mario Bros. Movie are in and they are surprisingly polarized. Mario’s return to Hollywood could end up being a box office hit, but not all critics are thrilled. It is currently under 50 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
The edge calls it “the new gold standard for video game movies.” Yahoo! But igamesnews describes it as “an endless nostalgia bait with no hook of its own”. Oh no! So far the no’s seem to greatly outweigh the yes’s, but it also sounds like the kind of movie one might expect minions studio Illumination: full of jokes, incredibly polished and maybe a little empty.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie releases April 5 and stars Chris Pratt (Mario), Anya Taylor-Joy (Peach), Charlie Day (Luigi), Jack Black (Bowser) and a slew of other big-name talents, but you’ve probably known this since the Marketing Machine was out always and everywhere fire with all guns. It’s Nintendo’s first feature-length attempt since Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo’s ill-fated but morbidly charming live-action recreation from 1993, and follows incredible Switch console sales and a Super Nintendo World theme park that just opened in California.
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Pratt’s weird Mario voice and a brew blower game against Seth Rogen’s Donkey Kong That being said, the finished product sounds incredibly fun, enjoyable, and harmless, perhaps to a fault. “It’s clear from the first scenes The Super Mario Bros. Movie is made for children” writes our sister site, iO9. Fair enough. It also sounds more like a fan wiki brought to life than a full story. “For those who are even remotely familiar with Nintendo, watching the film is like cosplaying as The Leonardo DiCaprio shows memes‘ he remarked AV club in his review. Here’s what other reviews are saying so far:
However, the film works because it is structured logically and very traditionally Mario Kind of the ending, it takes every possible opportunity to make its various fantastical worlds seem like living, breathing, organic places that you’d want to spend hours exploring if they were parts of an open-world video game. It’s cool as hell every time someone’s outfit transforms after ingesting mushroom power-ups, but it’s things like being able to see every single seed on a Fire Flower’s face flicker like a candle that you really appreciate let how hard the film works to make things “right”.
Jack Black’s Bowser feels like the standout vocal performance, as the actor’s trademark bombast goes well with the Koopa King’s over-the-top confidence. Bowser’s thirst for power isn’t seriously explored: he wants to take over the Mushroom Kingdom because he’s a villain and that’s what villains do – apparently he missed the point of that group session in Wreck-it Ralph. But Black’s Bowser is scary, boisterous, and at times desperate for attention, and these frequent mood swings lend unpredictability to his scenes. Jables’ Bowser even performs a ballad in Peach’s honor that feels like a work-safe Tenacious DB side, a description I can’t imagine will upset fans of Black’s musical prowess.
Awe is the goal here, perhaps haunted by the spirit of the 1993s Super Mario Bros., a legendary live-action boondoggle that failed to please Nintendo, its fans, or moviegoers with its strange, dystopian take on the brave plumbers’ journey through the Mushroom Kingdom. (Even if slowly creeping towards cult favorite status in the intervening 30 years.) This new version of Mario is so faithful in his efforts to recreate the iconography of four decades of video games that there is almost no energy left to achieve the unconverted. The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a sermon for the Nintendo believers and their children and few others.
That’s how it goes across the board for speaker talent. Nobody’s bad, and they’re all funny when they basically have to be what you’d expect them to be. Seth Rogen plays Donkey Kong like he’s a Seth Rogen character in a stoner movie. Bowser pretty fair too Is Jack Black, complete with a musical number that sounds like a Tenacious D ballad. There’s certainly nothing to complain about – like most jokes in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, the song is funny! But it is not to fun. It’s usually funny.
The key thing about The Super Mario Bros. Movie is that too many animated movies don’t – I’d say without exaggerating that it ties the movie to the spirit of Yellow Submarine – a boisterous aesthetic of transmutation. We know Mario can balance on a girder to face off against Donkey Kong, although Donkey Kong’s father, Cranky Kong (voiced by Fred Armisen in the extreme New York accent, who feels somewhat at home in the Jungle Kingdom) cheers for Mario’s downfall. But when Mario wins the duel by turning into a cat just because he’s now wearing a furry cat costume, that’s pure video game surrealism. I change identity by tapping a power-up box, therefore I am.
The plot is as simple as can be, and character development is clearly not a priority. Considering Day’s terrific voice work as Luigi, it seems a shame that the character is gone for so long. But directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, creators of the Teen Titans go! Series, deliver a fairly faithful cinema adaptation that offers a lot of youthful humor but wisely does not lean towards broad satire.
So the film does relatively little to justify its existence unless it serves as a brand extension. It’s bright, jumps from one nostalgic moment to the next, and is carefully designed to be as harmless as possible. But while the long-standing characters of the are presented Super Mario Bros. Universe in the most benign light imaginable should please shareholders given the innovative design of some a Super Mario Bros. Game, would it have been too much for the film’s story to be a little more, well, awesome?
But even if it’s not your thing, everyone should find a way to coexist with this franchise very quickly. Because it’s hard to imagine a future where we don’t get much more of it. A veritable masterclass in exploiting juicy IP, The Super Mario Bros. Movie builds an intricate yet familiar world littered with video game Easter eggs that other movies might field. A spin-off film based on Rogen’s Donkey Kong has been rumored for some time, and it seems inevitable that another half-dozen will have been sketched on a whiteboard somewhere.
Matthew Fogel, the screenwriter, tied the various references together efficiently, but the film has an astounding lack of jokes, twists, memorable lines, thrilling stunts, touching emotional moments, and anything else that might captivate any viewer that is. t play spot-the innuendo. As slick and corporate as The Super Mario Bros Movie is, there’s a laziness in first draft that’s rare in big-screen animation. As Mario learns to be a hero, Bonnie Tyler’s Holding Out for a Hero is slapped on the soundtrack. When Mario and Donkey Kong (Seth Rogen) fight in an arena, Kong embodies Gladiator Russell Crowe. Do any of these decisions strike you as odd or surprising?
