After the notorious failure of the “Super Mario Bros.” film from 1993, fans have been desperately awaiting a new version that would prove its worth. With “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” now in theaters, it is time to see if it meets these expectations.
On the surface, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” is an incredibly faithful adaptation of the video games. The world is beautifully realized with the animation and there are a boatload of references found throughout the film for fans to pick up on. If this movie is anything, it’s a crowd-pleaser but it has several shortcomings.
The first major issue is with the voice acting and the worst contender here is easily Chris Pratt as Mario. This casting has been memed to death since it was announced, and it’s even more baffling after viewing the movie. At some points, he seems to attempt a Brooklyn accent, but drops it throughout the film, so it’s incredibly inconsistent. Beyond that, his attempts to mimic the original voice of Mario are incredibly cringe-worthy. There’s no other way to describe it.
The rest of the performances ranged from pretty good to satisfactory. Jack Black and Charlie Day were excellent as Bowser and Luigi, respectively, with Black having the best performance of the entire cast. Anya-Taylor Joy’s performance as Princess Peach was decent; she fit the role well, but didn’t add much beyond that. That’s precisely the biggest issue with “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.”
The film doesn’t add anything exceptional beyond what the source material already provided. The plot is a stock standard hero’s journey, and if you’re at all familiar with the game then you’ll know exactly where it’s going. Even if you aren’t, it is still incredibly predictable.
The characters are paper thin and barely have any personality or motivation beyond the base level. It checks all the boxes it needs to to be a solid movie and nothing more. This makes for a film that’s not offensively bad, just offensively boring.
This goes for the humor as well. There aren’t any jokes that are cringeworthy, and some did manage to elicit a smile or small chuckle, but it was mostly just completely serviceable. The humor did get a bit darker at some points, which was a little surprising, but it never really moved past anything you would expect from an Illumination movie.
Some fans are going to absolutely love this movie, which is completely fine. It was clearly made with respect to the legacy that Mario has left behind. They’ll argue that this is enough and it doesn’t need to be anything beyond that but for others, the bare minimum that “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” provides won’t be enough.
