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The Mario brothers bonding over their first job.

The “Super Mario Bros. Movie” needed to learn to stop and smell the piranha plants

Patrick Pugh Staff Reporter Apr 20, 2023

Video games movies have a bad reputation in film circles, at best some are fondly remembered as fun cheese like the “Street Fighter” or the original “Mortal Kombat” adaptation or are seen as bastardized copies not worth the film they were shot on, like “Alone In The Dark” or most of the live action “Resident Evil” movies. 

But it seems the video game to film curse is starting to wear off, with more recent films like “Detective Pikachu” and the “Sonic” movies doing well financially and getting favorable reviews. And the win streak continues with “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” (2023, directed by Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic, and Pierre Leduc) and is a lot better and more faithful than the ‘93 film that starred the late Bob Hopskins and John Leguizamo.

The story (unsurprisingly) is about the Mario brothers, two plummers from Brooklyn that consist of Mario (voiced by Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day). During a plumbing job things get weird when they get magically transported to the Mushroom Kingdom ruled by Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy).

However, during the trip from Brooklyn to the realm of the fungi, the brothers are separated with Luigi being captured by the megalomaniacal turtle and king of the Koopas, Bowser (Jack Black), who is setting his sights on ruling the Mushroom Kingdom and marrying Peach.

Starting with the positives, the movie is gorgeous, with well detailed and fluid animation all around. Several parts of the movie would make great candidates for a screensaver or background, it’s that good.

 The voice acting is well done by the whole cast, though the stand outs are clearly Jack Black and Charlie Day.

Jack Black does fantastic as Bowser, making him equal parts intimidating, funny, and kind of pathetic, with how much he wants Peach. He practically steals any scene he is in.

Charlie Day as Luigi is obviously funny, but he also does great portraying Luigi’s scaredy-cat nature while still making it charming and not annoying as it could have very easily come off as.

Speaking of Luigi, the relationship between the brothers feels very heartwarming yet down to earth and real. 

The film also provides some pretty good laughs whether it being physical, with well animated slap-stick, or verbally, with witty lines and punchlines.

A great example of all the previously mentioned points, is when Bowser is torturing Luigi (by messing up his mustache) and when Bowser asks if his brother is the kind person that princesses find attractive Luigi replies “They do, if they have good taste.”

The movie is also jam packed with easter eggs and references not only from Mario but other Nintendo properties as well.

My personal favorite was when the DK Rap played when Donkey Kong (Seth Rogen) appeared for the first time.

Something that is worth mentioning is that much of the score is taken from or cleverly rearranged from the Mario games. And not just from NES ones either. From his entire video game career all the way up to his most recent incarnation from Super Mario Odyssey.

The music itself is obviously well done as it’s one of, if not the most, iconic video game scores of all time and for good reason.

Though when talking about soundtrack this is where the problems of the film do start to pop up, while the soundtrack from the games fit in and isn’t too distracting as to pull the audience out of the film, the same can not be said for the license songs that come up during certain moments in the film. 

And unlike the rest of the soundtrack the needle drops from the license music are very distracting and practically rips the audience out of the movie. What’s weird is that I’m sure there are plenty of tracks from the game that would fit the scenes just as well, if not better. 

Also, while Chris Pratt is not bad in the role of Mario, he’s perfectly fine even. It’s weird that they didn’t just get Charles Martinet to voice him instead, as he’s been voicing the character since 1995 and even makes two cameo appearances in the film, so they clearly had him in the booth. 

It makes Pratt’s casting as the character come off more jaded if not an insidious attempt to get people’s butts in seats (which in all honesty it probably was). 

But the filmmakers didn’t need to do that in this case, as the movie’s cast is packed enough as it is, they didn’t need to add one more celebrity. And if that didn’t help, being based on one of the most successful video game franchises of all time probably didn’t hurt drum up buzz. 

Also Mario, the main character and hero of the story, really feels like dead weight, for 95% of the plot. As Princess Peach is shown to be strictly better at pretty much anything making the audience wonder why he’s even there.

The story also has a problem with making certain characters who should be important pretty superfluous in the grand scheme of things. 

A great example of this is Toad (Keegan-Michael Key) a character that (while physically present for most of the story) is so unimportant that I left him out of the plot synopsis.

But the film’s biggest problem is its pacing. It moves faster than some sports cars, it goes by so quick.

For context the film, with credits included, is only an hour and thirty two minutes long, that’s only 2 minutes over the required amount of time to be considered a feature length film.

Because of this, certain plot points, character arcs, and any personal drama the cast might have with each other are brought up, and are either forgotten or blazed by just as quickly. 

The solution to which is obvious, slow down, that way you can more thoroughly explore the characters and pay off their plot beats. Plus, I don’t think most people would mind spending two hours with these characters, as they are legitimately charming and fun to be around.

“The Super Mario Bros. Movie”, while a galaxy length far from a perfect movie, is a fun time for fans of the games or those who want to entertain the little ones for 90 minutes. 

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