Super Mario Movie Sounds Shockingly Good, Or Pretty Bad Depending On Who You Ask
The reviews for The Super Mario Bros. Movie are in and theyâre surprisingly polarized. Marioâs return to Hollywood may end up being a box office coup, but not all of the critics are in love with it. Itâs currently under 50 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
The Verge is calling it âthe new gold standard for video game films.â Yahoo! But Polygon describes it as âendless nostalgia bait with no hook of its own.â Oh, no! So far the nays seem to be strongly outweighing the yays, but it also sounds like the type of movie you might expect from Minions studio Illumination: overstuffed with jokes, incredibly polished, and maybe a bit empty.
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The Super Mario Bros. Movie at 48% Rottentomatoes pic.twitter.com/imwBakVOyX
â Wario64 (@Wario64) April 4, 2023
The Super Mario Bros. Movie releases on April 5 and stars Chris Pratt (Mario), Anya Taylor-Joy (Peach), Charlie Day (Luigi), Jack Black (Bowser), and a host of other big-name talent, but you probably already knew that since the marketing machine has been firing on all cylinders everywhere all the time. Itâs Nintendoâs first stab at a feature length film since Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamoâs ill-fated but morbidly charming 1993 live action recreation, and comes on the heels of the Switchâs incredible console sales and a Super Nintendo World theme park that just opened in California.
Prattâs weird Mario voice and a brewing fan backlash against Seth Rogenâs Donkey Kong aside, the finished product sounds incredibly fun, agreeable, and inoffensive, perhaps to a fault. âFrom its very first scenes, itâs clear The Super Mario Bros. Movie is made for children,â writes our sister-site, iO9. Fair enough. It also sounds like a fan wiki brought to life rather than a complete story. âFor those with even a passing familiarity with Nintendo, watching the film is like cosplaying as the Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme,â noted the AV Club in its review. Hereâs what other reviews are saying so far:
The Verge
The movie works, though, because as itâs building toward its logical and very traditional Mario kind of ending, it uses every possible opportunity it has to make its various fantastical worlds feel like living, breathing, organic places that youâd want to spend hours exploring if they were parts of an open-world video game. Itâs cool as hell every single time someoneâs outfit transforms after they ingest mushroom power-ups, but itâs things like being able to see each of the individual seeds on a fire flowerâs face flicking like a candle that really make you appreciate how hard the movieâs working to get things âright.â
IGN
Jack Blackâs Bowser feels like the standout vocal performance as the actorâs trademark bombast fits well with the Koopa Kingâs outsized sense of self. Bowserâs thirst for power isnât explored in any serious way: he wants to take over the Mushroom Kingdom because heâs a bad guy and thatâs what bad guys do - apparently he missed the point of that group session in Wreck-it Ralph. But Blackâs Bowser is frightening, impetuous, and desperate for attention at times, and those frequent mood shifts lend his scenes unpredictability. Jablesâ Bowser even performs a ballad in Peachâs honor which feels like a safe-for-work Tenacious D b-side, a descriptor I canât imagine will upset any fans of Blackâs musical chops.
Polygon
Reverence is the goal here, haunted perhaps by the ghost of 1993âs Super Mario Bros., a legendary live-action boondoggle that pleased neither Nintendo, nor its fans, nor filmgoers with its weird, dystopian take on the plucky plumbersâ journey through the Mushroom Kingdom. (Even if it has slowly crept toward cult-favorite status in the intervening 30 years.) This new take on Mario is so faithful in its efforts to recreate iconography from four decades of video games that thereâs almost no energy left to expend on reaching the unconverted. The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a sermon for the Nintendo faithful and their children, and few others.
GameSpot
Thatâs pretty much how it goes across the board for the voice talent. Nobody is bad, and theyâre all funny when they need to be in basically the ways you would expect. Seth Rogen plays Donkey Kong like heâs a Seth Rogen character in a stoner movie. Bowser, likewise, pretty much just is Jack Black, complete with a musical number that sounds like a Tenacious D ballad. Nothing to complain about there, certainlyâlike most of the jokes in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, the song is funny! But itâs not too funny. Itâs normal funny.
Variety
The key thing âThe Super Mario Bros. Movieâ has that too many animated films donât â I would say, without overstating it, that it links the film to the spirit of âYellow Submarineâ â is a rollicking aesthetic of transmutation. We know that Mario can balance on a girder to face off against Donkey Kong, even as Donkey Kongâs dad, Cranky Kong (voiced by Fred Armisen with the kind of extreme New York accent that somehow feels right at home in the Jungle Kingdom), cheers for Marioâs demise. But when Mario wins the duel by transforming himself into a cat, all because he is now wearing a furry cat costume, thatâs pure video-game surrealism. I change identity by tapping a Power-up box, therefore I am.
The Hollywood Reporter
The plot is as basic as can be, and character development is clearly not a priority. Considering Dayâs terrific voice work as Luigi, it seems a shame that the character disappears for such long stretches. But directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, creators of the Teen Titans Go! series, deliver a reasonably faithful big screen adaptation that, while it features plenty of juvenile humor, wisely doesnât lean toward broad satire.
Slant Magazine
The film, then, does relatively little to justify its existence outside of serving as brand extension. Itâs bright, bounces from one nostalgia-soaked moment to the next, and is meticulously designed to be as inoffensive as possible. But while presenting the long-standing characters of the Super Mario Bros. universe in the most innocuous light imaginable may please shareholders, given the innovative design of many a Super Mario Bros. game, would it have been too much for the filmâs story to be a little more, well, super?
Indie Wire
But even if itâs not your thing, everyone should find a way to coexist with this franchise very quickly. Because itâs hard to see a future where we donât get a lot more of these. âThe Super Mario Bros. Movieâ is a true masterclass in exploiting juicy IP, building out an intricate-yet-familiar world thatâs littered with video game Easter eggs that could set up other movies. A spin-off film about Rogenâs Donkey Kong has been rumored for a while, and it seems inevitable that another half dozen have been sketched out on a whiteboard somewhere.
BBC
Matthew Fogel, the screenwriter, has done an efficient job of linking the various references, but the film has an astonishing lack of jokes, twists, memorable lines, exhilarating stunts, touching emotional moments, and anything else that might engage any viewer who isnât playing spot-the-allusion. As slick and corporate as The Super Mario Bros Movie is, it has a first-draft laziness thatâs rare in big-screen animation. When Mario is learning to be a hero, Bonnie Tylerâs Holding Out for a Hero is slapped on the soundtrack. When Mario and Donkey Kong (Seth Rogen) fight in an arena, Kong impersonates Russell Crowe in Gladiator. Does either of those choices seem funny or surprising to you?
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