'The Super Mario Bros. Movie' review: What if Mario had daddy issues?
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is designed to be a crowd-pleaser. Illumination Entertainment, the animation studio behind the Minions, unites the world-famous Mario Bros. franchise with Michael Jelenic and Aaron Horvath, creators of the wildly popular and kinetic cartoon series Teen Titans Go! For good measure, they stuff the cast with comedic talent, including Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key, Charlie Day, Seth Rogen, Fred Armisen, and MCU movie star Chris Pratt. And yet, The Super Mario Bros. Movie falls short of being solidly fun.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is loaded with fan service.
With over 20 games and counting to its credit, the Super Mario Bros. franchise offers plenty of iconography from which filmmakers can pull to thrill fans. Directors Horvath and Jelenic use plenty. Composer Brian Tyler shrewdly works in Koji Kondo's original Nintendo tunes throughout the movie. Goosed with an orchestral approach, these once chirping themes have a cinematic grandeur that plays well whether the bros are submerging into a treacherous sewer, celebrating a victory at a castle, or facing off against the dreaded Bowser.
Beyond a central cast that boasts Mario (Chris Pratt), Luigi (Charlie Day), Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy), Bowser (Jack Black), and Donkey Kong (Seth Rogen), The Super Mario Bros. Movie also includes appearances from Toads, Koopa Troopas, Goombas, Dry Bones, King Boo, Bullet Bill, Cheep Cheep, Shy Guys, and more. There are also familiar backdrops and action sequences based on gameplay, including a fast and furious car chase on Rainbow Road. However, not every detail is given care in its inclusion.
For every satisfyingly spooky bit with a re-animating Dry Bones, there's a scad of critters that are passed over in a traveling montage that feels like a joyless checklist. Most painful, the action scenes — while popping with references to the games — never score the jolting rush of actually playing them. In a kids' movie so brightly colored it's an actual eyesore, there's no chance the heroic brothers will truly fall. So the stakes aren't life or death or win or lose. It's all blandly inevitable.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie plays it safe with cliches.
There's a woeful lack of originality in the storytelling. The screenplay, credited to Mark Fogel, leans heavily on tedious tropes plucked from superhero movies and fantasy adventures. Mario is re-imagined in the vein of an MCU hero. He's a scrappy underdog, desperate to prove himself, when a twist of fate gives him the chance and superpowers — in this case, in the form of mushroom power-ups.
Naturally, there's a comical training montage featuring the hero learning how to hone his new skills. He'll be faced with an antagonist who is his opposite: large, vicious, and hard-shelled, where he is thin-skinned (and sensitive to being called "small"). The Super Mario Bros. Movie even taps into the MCU trope of having a climactic battle in New York City, where a hero will be heralded even after bringing mayhem to his home turf.
For good measure, Fogel folds in a tedious backstory in Brooklyn, where Mario's extended Italian-American family clamors at him in stereotypical outbursts over pasta to tell him he's a loser. Did you ever wish Mario had daddy issues? If so, well, good for you; The Super Mario Bros. Movie will give you that.
Beyond this, the love triangle between Mario, Peach, and Bowser plays on the age-old archetype of a white knight rescuing a beautiful princess from a violent tyrant. Admittedly, in the movie's version, Peach is more of a Stong Female Character, who despite being more skilled at the training track than Mario, will gladly step aside to let him do much of the derring-do. Where Adventure Time took this trope and steadily complicated it, The Super Mario Bros. Movie gives Peach an action scene or two and calls it a day. Who needs a three-dimensional heroine when female empowerment can be cheat coded?
How does The Super Mario Bros. Movie compare to 1993's Super Mario Bros.?
Undoubtedly, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is more true to Nintendo's IP than the 1993 live-action movie, which featured a fungus-covered metropolis, Goombas as towering thugs, and Bowser as a spiky-haired mobster. Directed by Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, Super Mario Bros. was a ludicrously stupid movie that had astoundingly little to do with the game that inspired it. But you know what it got right? Mario.
Rightly heralded character actor Bob Hoskins brought a grit-teethed, blue-collar determination to the plucky plumber. And, as he also did in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, he offered a poignant arc of a cynical man who learns to open up amid a world of cartoonish mayhem. Did he sound like Mario from the games? Absolutely not. But you understood who Mario was from the first grumble of Hoskins' take on a Brooklyn accent. Chris Pratt cannot compare.
Sure, Pratt has done terrific voicework as a naive but lovable oaf in The Lego Movie and Onward. But in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, he's lost that spark. His Mario doesn't do the "Its-a me" voice, save for a cheeky commercial for his fledgling plumbing company. And that's fine. Frankly, that bit would have grown stale quickly. But whatever voice Pratt is doing isn't Brooklyn, and it isn't anything particularly specific, consistent, or exciting.
Around him, Charlie Day and Keegan-Michael Key bring exuberance as sidekicks Luigi and Toad. Fred Armisen brings trademark comedic snark as Cranky Kong. Seth Rogen lets loose with earnest glee as Donkey Kong. Khary Payton even gets some laughs as a snarling Penguin King. Anya Taylor-Joy is also in this movie. But Pratt is meant to be the heart at its center, and his performance feels painfully middle of the (rainbow) road. Mario as a character doesn't jump out beyond the tedious cliches of his story. He's the hero because the movie says so, not because he makes our hearts soar with excitement. So, who could blame you if you're rooting for someone else instead?
Jack Black is glorious as Bowser.
Specifically, national treasure Jack Black is charisma and chaotic starlight in human form. Whether onscreen in comedy gems like School of Rock, High Fidelity, The Polka King, or Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, or lending his voice to Po in the Kung Fu Panda movies, Black is a force of nature that can elevate any project. As Bowser, he gives a growling performance that is instantly enthralling as the bass of his Tenacious D voice rattles through the theater speakers in an action-packed opening for fire, ice, and silliness. But where his performance really comes alive is when Bowser sings.
While Bowser is thinly sketched baddie schtick, Black makes him unquestionably fun when he pours that black heart into a power ballad about loving Princess Peach. All my gripes about this movie were silenced during the interludes when Black lets loose in all his rock star might to sing, "Peaches, Peaches, Peaches, Peaches, Peaches," over and over.
It's fine for a Mario movie to be stupid. It's right, even. But it should still be fun. In the Jack Black sections, this balance of stupid and fun are perfect. But too much of this movie feels like a nakedly commercial grasp for nostalgia-inducing cash.
There's fan service, and then there's pandering.
Of course, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is bursting with stuff from the games. There are even a few amusing jokes about game culture, like when one Toad urges another to fix a broken item by "blowing into it." Beyond these bits, Horvath and Jelenic bolster the soundtrack with popular songs like "Holding Out for a Hero," "Take on Me," and "Mr. Blue Sky." These upbeat jams scratch at the surface of their scenes' meanings, offering easy head-nodding and energy but little depth. There's no sense of challenge or play in this movie.
Unlike The Lego Movie or even the Barbie teaser, this toy-based film is missing that spark that reminds us of the unique joy of playing with its inspiration. There's nothing here that connects to our childhoods like the click of Legos or the madcap multiverse mayhem of a fleet of Barbies converging on a painted beachscape. Perhaps because The Super Mario Bros. Movie is so determined not to rile fans or the brand, there's an aching lack of self-aware humor. Pratfalls are plentiful, but there are too few punchlines.
In the end, it feels like one long commercial. Sure, I walked away wanting to revisit my old Mario games. But I also walked away with no wish to ever again hit play on The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie opens in theaters April 7.