The Super Mario Bros. Movie review: An Easter egg-filled adventure built for Nintendo fans
Chris Pratt's Mario and Charlie Day's Luigi bring the long-running game back to theaters for a family friendly, primary-colored romp
Film Reviews Nintendo
After 1993’s live-action film adaptation of Super Mario Bros. crashed and burned (in a lake of boiling lava), it’s understandable that Nintendo was a bit gun (or perhaps Koopa shell) shy when it came to bringing Mario back to the big screen. The live-action film, which ditched Bowser for a ridiculous and disgusting dinosaur humanoid, was trounced at the box office and walloped by critics. Three decades later, Nintendo, following the children’s IP playbook laid out by Sonic The Hedgehog and The Lego Movie, returns to theaters with a family friendly, primary-colored adventure that features animation nearly identical to the franchise’s recent video games (and not a single machine-gun wielding dinosaur).
In The Super Mario Bros. Movie, brothers Mario and Luigi have relocated from Italy/Japan/Moo Moo Farm to Brooklyn, New York, where they attempt to launch a plumbing business. While the brothers bust out their trademark Italian accents (“it’s-a me”) in the TV ads for their new plumbing venture, they’ve otherwise adopted new voices provided by Chris Pratt (for Mario) and Charlie Day (for Luigi). After an ill-fated house call, the plumbers try to save face by fixing the New York City sewer system (move over, New York City Mayor Eric Adams) only to be sucked into a warp pipe that deposits Mario in the Toadstool Kingdom with Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) and Luigi in a bleak underworld full of Dry Bones and Shy Guys.
After zipping around with his new bestie, Toad (Keegan-Michael Key), Mario is informed that Bowser (Jack Black) is destroying worlds and it’s up to him and Peach to defend all the cute sentient mushrooms. No longer a damsel-in-distress, Peach is now an action hero, and after she whips Mario into shape with a fun training montage that involves force-feeding him non-sentient mushrooms, the pair head off to recruit Donkey Kong (Seth Rogan) for their war with Bowser. The film proceeds with the assuredness of a Mario video game as it moves through set pieces modeled after the Donkey Kong arcade masterpiece, levels from Mario Kart, and the latest Mario iterations for the Switch. Obviously, Mario and Luigi reconnect and face off against Bowser in a lava-filled lair, and the big bad is vanquished in the end. The only difference from the Nintendo games is that viewers don’t have to replay a section 45 times because they keep getting nicked by a rogue Koopa shell.
Perhaps the film’s greatest asset is its clever reliance on the treasure trove of IP that Nintendo has to offer. Directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic (the duo behind Teen Titans Go!) string together Easter eggs and witty references in a quantity that rivals Steven Spielberg’s 2018 adventure Ready Player One; Mario eats at “Punch-Out Pizza,” an “antique store” in Toadstool Kingdom sells pixelated coins, Donkey Kong is introduced with the DK Rap, and a duel between DK and Mario is attended by a hoard of past Kongs. The Super Mario 64 eel, King Bomb-omb, Baby Luigi, and Rosalina’s blue Luma all make appearances. The film includes sequences that look like the old side-scroll Mario games and it even pays homage to the Mario Kart 64 Rainbow Road shortcut. The most ingenious element of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, however, is easily the score from Brian Tyler, which brilliantly ties in dozens of iconic sound cues from the games with ’80s chart toppers and fresh new music. For those with even a passing familiarity with Nintendo, watching the film is like cosplaying as the Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme.
While the references are sure to charm Nintendo lovers, and the standard Illumination-style cartoon humor will please youngsters, the film otherwise doesn’t have a ton to offer. Peach is pluckier and Bowser is a romantic with a penchant for piano ballads but there’s not much new or fresh in the way of story or animation. A weak theme of brotherhood and friendship pops up occasionally, like a soon-to-retreat Piranha Plant, the universe full of magical pipes is never fully explored, and Peach’s backstory is hinted at and then dropped (post-credit scenes suggesting a sequel may mean the writers are saving this for later). While the writing is chuckle-inducing and the voice acting is passable, neither necessitate a second playthrough (it’s no Mario Party 2).
Ultimately, Nintendo fans are sure to find the second Mario film (unlike the first) well worth a trip to the cinema, and with a runtime of only 92 minutes, it doesn’t overstay its welcome. But to swipe a metaphor from the original NES Super Mario Bros. game, while the film may complete the level, it doesn’t quite nail the leap to the top of the flagpole.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie opens in theaters nationwide on April 5
108 Comments
All I care about this is if there’s fan service and will my kid like it and it looks like a “yes” on both fronts. It doesn’t need to be anymore than that much like Mario games themselves.
Exactly, I am down to see it but I have an 8 year old at home who is going nuts to watch this
It doesn’t need to be anymore than that much like Mario games themselves.Except that various Mario games themselves have been groundbreaking, incredible gaming experiences, so why wouldn’t you want more than clearing the extremely low bar of fan service and your kid liking it?
Because an adaptation of a video game isn’t really the time/place to go for groundbreaking and incredible? I’d also go further and argue Mario isn’t groundbreaking so much as tightly engineered, smartly designed, and colorful. A Mario movie that is zippy, bright, and fun sounds like a solid play.
And various Mario Games are reiterations of previous entries in their respective series and they’re completely fine and fun. That’s the beauty of the franchise, it can reach for the skies and deliver something fresh and exciting but it’s also the ultimate comfort food game where I don’t need to relearn much about a New Super Mario Bros or a Mario Kart sequel and what little I do need to learn is simple and intuitive.
Probably because if one is looking for a groundbreaking, incredible movie experience there are better paths to get there that don’t involve a plumber and a talking mushroom riding go-karts with a monkey.
Yeah but that’s because they’re games, how much more “innovative” and “groundbreaking” can a movie about Mario be? Gonna add Smell-o-vision? Just make it that one joke movie from Futurama and let the audience decide what happens at pivotal moments?Frankly it’s groundbreaking enough for not shoving a live-action human in there at some point.
I mean, my point was more the “wouldn’t you want more than clearing the extremely low bar of fan service and your kid liking it” than “the movie should do for the genre what Super Mario 64 did for 3D platformers”, you know? I want the movie to be actually good beyond references to the thing and kids liking it, because we have a ton of movies that are just cynical references to the thing, and kids like some real dogshit.
Making a genuinely good movie like that depends on so many factors that, with an IP this big, it’s no wonder anyone would play it safe. I think the last time an animated film broke new ground, at least stylistically, was “Spider-Verse”, and you will find many people not eager to watch it since they’re not already Spider-Man fans. One of the reasons it could take risks and do something interesting was because Spider-Man is such a bankable character in movies. If this film does well, we might see something like Puss in Boots: The Last Wish for one of its many sequels, and that’s, realistically, the most we can ask for from a big-budget animated adaptation by a major studio.
I mean, you’re not wrong, but also I think it’s important to note that Nintendo is co-producing this and not only are they hyper-protective of their properties but they got burned bad back in the 90s with the live action Mario, which is why it’s taken 30 years for them to agree to make another movie. The directors/writers probably had to fight to even get a change like “Mario saves his brother instead of the princess, and also Peach is an action star” past the Big N. This isn’t just a movie, it’s a proof of concept, it’s Hollywood trying to coax the most hesitant video game company in the biz out of their shells and go “it’s okay guys, look, we’re not gonna butcher the IP, we promise.” And then of course, to try to ease them into letting Hollywood play with some of their many other lucrative toys. I predict that if/when there’s a sequel (there almost certainly will be because, plot aside, this thing is gonna rake in a crapload from nerds and children alike) then we might see something better on its own merits.
If the sequel doesn’t have Wart as the main bad guy, we riot at dawn.
Yeah, it’s not like the Mario games have powerful character arcs or compelling narratives. Keeping it simple but fun is fine.
I get your point, but some of those nuts Super Mario Galaxy worlds with 3D motion would be pretty damn cool from Mario’s POV instead of god’s-eye.
I do not want a movie shot from a 1st person POV
Porn excepted, obviously.
If Lou Albano was alive, he’d be in this movie’s opening and closing scenes and we’d all love it, damn it
I am not of the age to have watched the Super Show but that is the only live action cameo I would accept.
It was glorious.
It was not. It was awful
Don’t sass me.
It’s still a game, the Mario story itself is very simple
Every time a theater plays the movie they shave 0.3-0.5 seconds off the runtime.
In other words, fun. Good. We need fucking fun.
With the D&D movie being an absolute blast, and this and the trailer for ‘Barbie’ looking quite promising, maybe this is the year fun comes back to the movies.
The Whale sequel or GTFO.
I’ll watch The Whale Returns as long as The Rock co-stars as a badly rendered CGI character.
The Squid vs. The Whale!
I’d watch the shit out of a movie where a future starship crew travels back in time to retrieve Brandon Fraser and his mate to repopulate the species.
You’ll get Robert Downey Junior quipping a quip quippily in the iron man suit and like it, young man.
“No longer a damsel-in-distress, Peach is now an action hero, and after she whips Mario into shape with a fun training montage that involves force-feeding him non-sentient mushrooms”I have seen some deviant art where Mario returns the favor
The AV Club of old would have made at least a variation on that joke. Sigh.
We truly live in the end-times when one half of the internet is devoted to that which the other half pretends doesn’t exist except between people who love each other very much.
People are always saying we’re in the end times, but it Never. Fucking. Happens. I want to see crazy shit. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies… Rivers and seas boiling… Dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!
I want to see shit that would turn you white!
I feel like Mario is the one video game franchise where you can actually get away with a movie that puts references first and plot second. The average schmuck on the street probably isn’t going to know what Labyrinth Zone or Torterra is, but they’ll know what fire flowers and blue shells are. Sure, they might call Goombas “evil mushrooms you stomp on” or “those walking turd things”, but they know what they look like.A year ago I had no faith this movie would be anything but terrible, but I now have actual expectations, as it’s refreshing to see a video game movie fully commit to its source material instead of trying to walk a weird middle ground that sticks CG creatures in an everyday world or aiming for outright realism. Detective Pikachu was similarly sold as “fun for the fans” and I thought it was really stupid, so as long as this doesn’t go the same route by having actual Jack Black fusing with Bowser…actually wait, that sounds incredible. I’d watch that.
Pokemon has had pokemon fusing with people since the first game
This review sounds pretty underwhelmed for what turned out to be a B score. I was holding out hope for it being unexpectedly really good, but I guess I’m chasing the Puss in Boots: The Last Wish dragon. I am nothing if not a mark for exactly this, so I will check it out after I get to Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves this weekend. DADHAT fever: catch it!!
Puss in Boots TLW was ridiculously good. The whole time I was like, why is this so much better than it has any right to be?
The fucking 6th movie in the Shrek Cinematic Universe… who could’ve thought?
I went into the theater thinking it was going to suck, and ended up paying 25 bucks for a digital copy for my kid when it came out on, uh, home video (or whatever we call it now). I never buy new movies…just usually wait until they’re streaming for free.
I still maintain that Shrek 1 & 2 are the Godfather Parts 1 & 2 of CGI Ogre movies.
“Into the Spider-verse” had a huge impact on animation. For years Pixar was the standard, and in some ways still is, but it can’t be denied that thanks to “Into the Spider-verse”, we got a “Puss in Boots” sequel that decided to go in a new art direction. The upcoming Ninja Turtles film is doing the same.
I’m bummed about the new TMNT animation, especially after the beautiful, flowing animation of the previous TMNT iteration (that no one seemed to care about, sadly). Ben Schwartz as a cocky Leonardo! It was great! The only issue I have with PiB TLW—and the only one I’ll presumably have with the new TMNT movie—is the weird, janky animation. Can’t wait until this trend runs its course. So ugly.
Well to each their own. I think it’s beautiful and shows there is no one blueprint when it comes to animation. It’s a medium that allows for experimentation and a reminder to animators to be as wildly creative as they wish.
Yeah. I may not love this particular style of animation, but you have a point about creativity.
Heck just watch the trailer for Across The Spider-verse. I hate Marvel generally but my God is that trailer art in motion. Animation is crazy in that it can give universes and tell stories no other medium can so I do think that we are right to hold Animation to higher standards both in art and story. Both PiB and Spider-verse told lovely, intimate stories while having stunning animation.
Into the Spiderverse was the most overrated movie I’ve ever seen. There. I said it. Now I can live without that weighing me down.
Whaaaat. The story beats are so good!
It was…fine. Nothing revolutionary.
Puss In Boots made me think of the children’s books of Eric Carle, if someone made them look just a little more realistic.
It’s always refreshing to see people taking pride in their craft. PiB could have been such a throwaway cash grab.
Puss in Boots TLW was super great. Facts. And yeah, I agree with Vetro28, visually it owes a lot to Spider-verse for de-risking that art direction.
Dungeons and Dragons was a lot of fun
I think it’s more just a consequence of the movie hitting both exactly what it wanted to be and what we expected. It’s a movie-length version of what the trailers promised; that’s cool and great, but they set a bar such that when we got it, I don’t blame someone for being… in a positive way, nonplussed.Sometimes something doesn’t surprise you positively or negatively, but that doesn’t make it bad.
AV Club: “It mentions other IP owned by the same corporation, which is fun if you like ‘I recognize that thing’ humor. Chris Pratt is fine. In conclusion, it’s about as good as Pixar’s Up (B+)”
B != B+and people review movies, not websitesand whether you like it or not, all art reviews are contextual and not absolute, even given the same reviewer, two B scores don’t imply they are equally good movies
Not to be an old-timer, but I’d argue that the AV Club used to have a fairly consistent and calibrated editorial standard for grading where you could say: “Toy Story 3 (A) was exactly as good at being a thoughtful animated family movie as No Country for Old Men (A) was good at being a violent and darkly comic neo-western, even though they are vastly different movies with different audiences and aims.”In this current era of (I suspect) AI-generated reviews, the grade is just optimized in a vacuum to maximize clicks/ad-views with no calibration to other content.
In this current era of (I suspect) AI-generated reviews, the grade is just optimized in a vacuum to maximize clicks/ad-views with no calibration to other content. in my opinion ………. woof
Do you not know what ChatGPT is?
I get the impression I’m among the younger people in this community but…. ChatGPT is making AI writing university papers a reality right friggin now whether you want to accept that or not.
I’m a C++ programmer in the games industry. I work alongside ML software engineers .. they’re a few desks over. I’ve used GPT-4. Pretty useful as a handy reference sometimes. It’s quite impressive, and I’m well aware what it’s capable of. (It’s also impressive how confidently it can provide dead wrong information or correct-looking but wholly non-working code, but that’s another talk.) But it’s trained on existing data. For instance, the dataset GPT-4 trained on ends at 2021. Makes it great for university papers, for sure! But go ask it to write a review of a movie that just came out and see what it says to you. (“I’m sorry, but I am an AI language model, and as of my current knowledge cut off in 2021, there is no 2023 Super Mario Bros. movie that has been released yet.”) Charging the avclub with using AI to ghostwrite content without providing proper attribution is stupid but it’s even stupider when you understand how AIs like GPT works. Besides, occam’s razor! It would take more work/money just to keep the training model up to date enough to cover recent movies (or pay for a service that does so) than it would be to … just pay a regular human being not very much money to be a professional movie critic. (Besides, if you wanted to use AI you’d have to wait for other people to produce applicable reviews to ingest into your dataset to synthesize your review from, so you’d have to publish your review later than everyone else. Not a great business strategy.) Are they using AI to ghostwrite movie-unspecific flavor text or to write the parts of a review that are largely context involving things in the past, like the original MB movie? Event that’s the case, which I sincerely doubt simply because I’d expect some transparency and I imagine the vast majority of professional art critics would sniff at the notion out of sheer pride, that’s a far cry from the implication that the review is “AI-generated.” But geez, Occam’s razor. I feel like people who are super quick to suspect deception and ulterior motives are no better than people who naively accept anything at face value. Absent any kind of well founded argument, let alone actual evidence, it smacks of intellectual laziness: “anything can be AI-generated now, so I’m free to use the accusation of AI-generated content against people, groups, or companies for which I have negative emotional impressions of.” Put up or shut up.And just to head this off at the pass, it’s a certainty that GPT-style AI will find a role in the content pipeline as time passes, even on sites like this. That time isn’t now based on the current available models, and there will is certain to be policies regarding disclosure and attribution, perhaps informally so in the short term, but legislatively so in the longer term, at least for a website like this where the writers have professional reputations at stake.Or I dunno, G/O Media is late stage capitalism and nothing can be trusted and oh I’m such a fool! Nah, not really. When you spend your life both programming games and reading what people online say about people making games … let’s just say people talk a lot of shit despite not having the slightest idea of what goes into things and the sincerity of the people who do the work. People just say stuff, because .. they have emotions, and they can say things. And I apply that sensitivity to other organizations such as the AV club because I’ve worked in the professional realm long enough not to mistake thinking cynically for thinking critically.
Lol do you think nobody reviews websites? You actually are allowed to ask reviews to hold to a higher standard. Don’t just accept slop…. but also the film they’re contrasting here is “Up” which I’ve always found overrated.
I was recently tuned into the film The Secret of Kells. I blame Up for me not being aware of it sooner given it stole the Oscar from it.
and people review movies, not websites
Lol do you think nobody reviews websites?
This part you’re responding to isn’t saying ‘People don’t review websites’. It’s saying ‘Websites don’t review movies’, i.e. the person who reviewed this movie isn’t the same person who reviewed Up for AV Club well over a decade ago; there’s no reason to expect consistent reviews/ratings when the entire review staff has changed in that time.
There had better be a fucking Cappy cameo. I’ve spent countless hours throwing that sentient bitch of a hat around and I want to see him/it.
#ReleasetheCappyCut
It sounds like the reviewer was underwhelmed by the exploration of the worlds and Peach’s backstory, but there is a post credit scene hinting at a sequel.. so yeah…did you not think with IP like this that they WOULDN’T be saving stuff for a sequel?
Who forgot to invite Chun-Li to the Super Mario Bros.?
Am I the only person alive who actually kind of enjoys watching Bob Hoskins and Jon Leguizamo drunk on scotch running around in dino-blade-runner New York while Dennis Hopper sleazes around harder than he’s ever sleazed before? I get that it wasn’t an appropriate Mario Brothers adaptation, but I still think… it’s.. kinda.. fun? Mojo Nixon is there! They turn him into a harmonica-lizard! Come on!
The original film is enjoyable as a deeply weird blockbuster that simply wouldn’t exist in today’s studio environment. But yeah, while I think it reaches “so weirdly bad it wraps around to being fun again”, I can see why it doesn’t for lots of people. And if you do that with a favorite IP, it’s almost always going to fail to connect.
Loved it as a kid, still love it today. Such a weirdly cool movie.
I loved it as a kid. They did put together a great cast for it. It’s just had little to do with Mario other than the characters and a few references. It just felt like that the writers and producers didn’t know which direction to go or how to start with and what it wanted to be never really clear. Like it was more trying to crib on all the dinosaur mania going on that time in pop culture at the time than the Mario games. Despite also being a bad video game movie too, Street Fighter at least got it right, and you can tell Raul Julia, Van Damme, and etc. had a lot of fun doing it. Hoskins, Hopper, and etc. hated being there and doing that movie and it shows. Should’ve embraced the camp like Street Fighter and had fun with it.
They hated it because the director-duo who made the movie were impossible to work with. You can’t embrace the camp if you’re working a miserable job for a horrible boss.
Van Damme also had a lot of cocaine doing it.
I mostly remember being confused by its existence for exactly that reason – WTF are they doing with Mario and Luigi in that whacked-out environment??
No, despite hundreds of people writing about it’s weird “charms” for decades, somehow you’re the only one
Nixon making a joke about the King being everywhere is classic.
My favourite Hopper story comes from that movie: where his kid asked “Why did you do that movie?” and Hopper said “Because sometimes I need money to buy you shoes”.And his kid says “Dad, I didn’t need shoes that badly.”
It’s got a very 90’s flavour that other movies like Tank Girl or Freaked did a lot better.
This is a wildly different (don’t @ me with “different writers have different opinions”) take from the one Germaine posted. I don’t know what to think lmfao.
Well, the same personal thoughts on a subject are not always shared by the same composers of an article.
Right… I understand that and that’s fine.I’m talking about my personal feelings, because one review said it’s great while the other called it trash. That does nothing to help me decide to see it, or not lol. I’ve been on the fence since the original trailer.
The other one watch it expecting to be a oscar winning drama film.This one knows that it is aimed for all age young kid targeted film and review it accordingly.
The one thing I wanted to know is whether or not the casting of Chris Pratt actually made sense, and if his presence improved the film, but other than saying “the voice work is passable” there was no reference to him which felt a little odd. Ah well, I can happily miss this at the cinema it seems, and just wait for a lazy Sunday afternoon to catch it one day.
Mostly what I’ve heard is that Pratt does at least a decent job but the rage at Pratt for “not really trying” should have been directed at Rogen.
I long ago gave up on complaining about the silliness of casting name actors for voice roles, unless you’re really going to lay into their public persona to add to the character. Albert Brooks as the neurotic Marlin in Nemo was perfect, for instance. But if you’re going to have Pratt do an Italian voice, really what is the point at all? GotG fans aren’t going to see this because he’s in it.
GotG fans don’t even go to see GotG because Chris Pratt is in it.
…Donkey Kong is introduced with the DK Rap…I like the DK Rap and all but it’s become very clear to me we’re living in the goofiest of all possible timelines.
It’s not all goof:#justiceforgrant
hopefully it’s fun. and it’s hard to think that the Hoskins/Leguizamo version was 30 years ago!! Street Fighter, even Double Dragon, got to have films back then. LOL..
I can’t wait for the mid-credits scene where Samus Aran asks, “Have you heard of the Smash Brothers Initiative?”
I won’t gain any respect for Smash until they put Plok in it.
If it’s anyone, it’s Dr. Light as the Nick Fury stand in.I don’t know if you want to stick to close to Avengers characters, but if you do, Mario is Captain America, Megaman in Iron Man, Link would be Thor (or maybe Kid Icarus). They’re all fighting Sonic in the first team up movie.
The more I think about it, going the safe route is the smart play. Because the vast majority of the helpful suggestions in this comment section are terrible. I hope you guys are kidding.
I think you meant to write ‘horde’ of past Kongs, not ‘hoard’
Okay, but would it be untoward if the Kong horde scored their banana hoard onboard? Would the audience get bored or be floored in the gourd?
Also “Rogen” not “Rogan”
Since this film has Bowser I hope we get a Sha-Na-Na reunion and musical number.
deeeeep cut
I read that this was apparently going to be a Doki Doki Panic movie, but they just reanimated the main characters to make it more palatable to American audiences.
haha
I look forward to the childless “Adults” going to see this and being upset children in the audience are being loud.
Essential reading: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/25/mario-not-so-super-at-forty
“The only difference from the Nintendo games is that viewers don’t have to replay a section 45 times because they keep getting nicked by a rogue Koopa shell.” – Nintendo kids red alert we have a reviewer pretending to be a Nintendo kid over here.
It was a good movie. Not transcendent, but an amusing, fun little flick. My seven year old loved it. Level clear. And Chris Pratt was great, damn it. I know. But it’s true.
[SPOILER ALERT]What are we likely getting in a sequel? – Based on the movie’s ending and mid- and post-credits scenes, it looks safe to say we’re getting more Bowser as primary antagonist, as well as a Yoshi (sub)plot. (Btw, won’t Bowser grow big if he hits himself, runs into the cage, etc.? Why is he still small?)What do I want in a sequel?- I’d like to see Daisy. That may or may not involve digging into Peach’s origins.- Luigi should get more to do. I don’t care what, just something.- Honestly, I don’t think we need to explore other villains (e.g. Wario) that much yet because we can still work with villains that were introduced in this movie. (E.g.: There wasn’t enough of a Goomba attack on Mario, given how Mario encounters a Goomba in the first game. Give me more Goomba. Also, Koopa’s kids, I guess, maybe.)- Some of the actors are talking like we’re getting a Super Mario Bros. Universe to rival the MCU in the next decade—wishful thinking, but maybe. (There could be a whole Luigi’s Mansion movie, I guess. I don’t know if I actually want that, though.)- We have more powerups to use: frog suit, hammer-throw suit, giant powerup, that stone statue thing, etc.What do you want to see in a sequel? Let me know.
This is a good family film, solid B to B+ range. There’s some minor stuff here or there that keep it from being A level, which I’ll touch on a bit, but overall its largely enjoyable. All the kids in the theater I was in seemed very into it, which is goal #1 considering this is a kids movie, which is something I think reviewers tend to overlook sometimes (especially the ones that are online too much).
The movie is pretty straight forward and moves quickly. Personally I think it could stand to be a tad longer to add a little more plot substance, but its 90 minutes and with this being a kids movie, you don’t want to push things too long. There’s amusing humor in the movie for adults to enjoy, but nothing that generating a ton of laughs in the audience I was in. A few more jokes and winks to the adults would have been appreciated. It largely relies on the nostalgia factor of people that grew up with the Mario games and seeing all those references on screen. In that respect, it largely works. That part is a lot of fun, but scratch below that surface and there’s not much more there. That’s why I say just a little bit more length to the movie for story content and a little bit more humor could have pushed this up a notch. But we’re talking the difference between B and A level here so its minor details. Don’t be discouraged by negative reviews, especially from those that are just looking for anything to knock it because its not perfect. This movie is a good time for everyone.
I had a similar opinion. The main thing I would’ve liked was for them to slow down a bit. So many of the action scenes were overloaded with cuts. It’s animation; there’s no reason you can’t present a continuous shot of Mario running and jumping from one thing to the next.Also, Jack Black was great and the Luma absolutely killed me. A little more oddities like that and I think the movie would’ve been better.