By Eric Shorey
“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” is totally fine. There’s nothing wrong with it and there’s nothing really notable about it either. Sometimes a movie is just fun to watch and there are no other thoughts.
Kotaku says the movie feels like it was “designed in a lab.” That’s because it was designed in a lab, if not literally then metaphorically. Jezebel says it is “braindead.” That’s because it is braindead … because it’s a movie based on a decades-old video game for children. Sometimes things just are what they are, and there isn’t anything more complicated than that. Sometimes an angry, clickbait-y headline is just clickbait because being angry and pseudo-intellectual about something universally beloved and entirely unsophisticated is great for garnering web traffic.
It’s fun to watch Mario because Mario is fun. He jumps on turtles and it makes a silly noise. He’s got a cute face and all the monsters are also very cute. When Mario jumps and it makes the jump noise, your brain goes, “Yay! Mario!” because you’ve been playing these games since you were a child and you are conditioned to have a pavlovian response to those specific sensory inputs. It’s fun! When Mario goes underground and the musical cue for underground levels hit, your brain goes, “Yay! It’s like the game!” Dunna-nunna-nunna! Yay!
Before Mario accidentally winds up in the Mushroom Kingdom, there’s a scene where he jumps through Brooklyn construction as if it were a Mario level! It was extra fun because I was literally in Brooklyn, and there was my home, in the movie! Towards the end of the movie, Mario and DK basically run through an entire level while a big band arrangement of the Super Mario 64 theme music plays and my whole mind lit up like a pachinko machine as all the pleasure synapses exploded with childish joy. Yay! We all love Mario!
All the voice acting is fine. I wouldn’t have known Mario was played by Chris Pratt if I hadn’t been reading headlines about how annoying it is that Mario is being played by Chris Pratt for like, a year. His Mario is totally generic and inoffensive. He says “Mamma Mia!” like five times and all the kids in the theater laughed every time. Charlie Day is fine as Luigi. Luigi is timid and cowardly but in a cute way. It’s fine. Anya Taylor-Joy is a perfectly princess-y princess. Keegan-Michael Key is charmingly goofy as Toad. Personally, I find Jack Black to be beyond annoying, just in general, but he kind of ate as Bowser. He basically puts on every Dad’s impression of a cartoon monster, all growls and grumbles and roars, but he also made King Koopa kind of pathetic, in an endearing way. Why does he want to marry the princess anyway? Why is this tough baddie so obsessed with weddings? The koopas don’t even get it! It’s kind of funny!
The characters are all very one-dimensional, which is fine, because it’s Mario. Mario is not deep.
The animation and design is all really good. Brooklyn looked like Brooklyn, but cute! The Mushroom Kingdom is colorful and bright! Bowser’s domain is very spoopy. When Mario gets a Tanooki suit power-up, you could see the felted fur on his outfit and it looked like real pajamas in a way that was soft and cuddly and made you want to also be wearing something warm and cozy. The toads all had beady little eyes and their lack of noses were kind of creepy, but it didn’t bother me, it was fine.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie isn’t feminist propaganda but it’s not not feminist. It’s actually nothing at all. The princess is a princess but she also kicks ass. Cool. Maybe we don’t need thinkpieces about it. It’s actually just fine. Mario isn’t political. It has no agenda. The only moral is that it’s good to be courageous. Which, I guess, sure, why not?
There was none of The Banter in the Mario movie. Which is good.
The movie took no risks at all. There were no surprises whatsoever. There are lots of stupid, cutesy Easter eggs for Mario die-hards. There were references to the other Mario movie and references to the Mario TV show, and if you missed them, it didn’t matter, because who cares. The movie is exactly what you think a Mario movie would be. It’s basically like playing a Mario game: it’s fun and silly and trivial and deeply unimportant.
There will be more Mario movies. That’s fine. I will probably keep seeing them, but not in a theater, because I hated being around children, even tho they were all having fun and were mostly well behaved. The whole audience clapped at the end.
It would be really cool if the second Mario movie had the plot of the second Mario game, which takes place inside a dream. It probably won’t because that’s honestly too weird. Since Yoshi only made a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in this movie, I have a feeling the next one will be about Bowser taking over Yoshi’s Island, or something. They can go to a spooky ghost house because they didn’t do that in the first movie. Then Mario will team up with Yoshi to rescue the Yoshis. The little Yoshi drum beat will play when Mario rides Yoshi and your brain will go, “Yay! I love Yoshi!” because everyone loves Yoshi. It will be fine. It’s all fine.
FINAL JUDGEMENT: B/B-