This review was originally made a few days after the movie released. I'm just putting it here since it's been in my Google Doc for a while.
I never thought of typing out a my full thoughts on the Super Mario movie, but something was compelling me to that I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I saw the film with my cousins and friend on Saturday with an open mind since I know the Mario games are known for their very simple stories and there was the whole online discourse about the critic score (The critic score is currently at 57% while the audience score is at 96%).
My brain telling me to write this review
After watching it my, cousins and I thought the movie was mediocre while my friend liked it. I think a day or two later, one of my friends in the group chat said he absolutely loved the movie while the others thought it was okay. I find it surprising how The Super Mario Bros film has gotten so many polarized reviews from both critics and audiences, which influenced me to write this review. I will go over what I liked and disliked about the movie as well my thoughts on the critics vs audience thing.
The trailers made it seem that the characters would be obnoxious and out of character (the most notable one would be Peach in which they made her seem like a “girlboss” mix of Daisy and Samus) but I was surprised with how some of the characters acted similar game counterparts such as Mario being courageous, Luigi being cowardly but kind of cautious, and Peach acting kind and sweet to Mario and her subordinates (although I think they overcompensated by making her an action hero).
The voice cast wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Chris Pratt sounds a lot better than the trailers, Charlie Day as Luigi is great, and Jack Black as Bowser was also great. I found the rest of the cast to be okay, but I’m glad they didn’t sound phoned in. I also really liked the original soundtrack as well as how the monsters such as Bowser and the Koopas looked. I really liked the easter eggs they put in the film as they referenced a lot of stuff from various Mario and other Nintendo games (like Punch-Out!! for example).
I really like the designs for the non-human characters. The seriously look like they came from the games with a bit of detail. Bowser's and Kamek's are my favorites as you can see the green scales on Bowser's shoulders and the wrinkles on Kamek's face (which makes sense since he's old and has raised Bowser since he was a baby).
Ain't he adorable?
That's unfortunately all of the positive things I can say about this movie as there were more things I disliked than liked. My biggest problem with it was the pacing. I don't know how you can make a 90 minute film bloated yet insanely fast, but The Super Mario Movie managed to do it. There's so much going on and the characters constantly moving from place to place without taking a break doesn't help. The addition of the Kong kingdom and the kart racing scene were unnecessary since it felt like they were added to include as much Mario references as possible as well not mattering since they all got captured except for Peach and Toad. I think it would have been fine to add them for a sequel because they just introduced so much at once. It's like Illumination thought they were only going to make one Mario movie so they decided to add everything all at once. It's funny how the Sonic movies, where the main character has super speed, knows when to take a break and let the characters relax and ease on the references.
I was disappointed with how the characters were handled, especially Luigi. It seems that he was set up to start a prison break or something, which would have been nice to develop his character, but he just take a backseat in the movie and doesn't do anything until the very end. Toad was kind of there and I didn't really care for him (I don't think he protected Peach or Mario at all despite that being his goal) and the blue Luma's nihilistic jokes overstayed its welcome pretty fast (like the other characters in the prison, I wanted him to stop talking). Honestly my biggest problem with the characters was the lack of any character development in general. One that comes to mind was Donkey Kong and Mario's rivalry. They hate each other after their fight at the arena but after one short conversation they're suddenly besties?? Or how Mario and Peach kind of flirted with each other during the kart racing scene but there wasn't really any romantic tension before or after that.
The licensed song choices completely threw me off since all of the ones that were featured in the film were completely unfitting. Seriously, who the hell though it was a good idea playing "Take on Me" by A-ha when the characters were having a joy-ride in the Kong Kingdom? I was hoping they'd be careful with the song choices in this, but it's an Illumination movie after all.
Then there's the ending to the film. I honestly thought it was fine and I liked the fight between Bowser and the Mario Bros, but I wish they didn't cut to them suddenly living in the Mushroom Kingdom. What happened to Brooklyn after their fight? Did see their aftermath and thought "Man, fuck Brooklyn! They'll clean themselves up."
"We did it Luigi! We saved the day!!"
Overall I wanted to like this movie and tried to watch it with an open mind, but I just thought it was mediocre. It felt like Illumination was dangling keys in front of me expecting me to love it thinking I’m a baby. If the movie could just slow down a bit (maybe add an extra 30 minutes) and have basic movie story telling with some character development, then I think I would have liked it. If I were to give the movie a score, I’d say it’s a 5/10 movie. I think kids will like it, but to me it’s just a movie with nice music and visuals without substance. Also a small nitpick but I like how the blue shell Paratroopa was in the movie poster but didn’t really do anything except blow up.
I also want to include a rant over something that really bugs me when it comes to addressing the criticism the movie is getting. I’ve seen die hard fans online say stuff like “oh it’s a kids movie” or “yeah just turn your brain off you’ll like it more” after seeing the score it got on Rotten Tomatoes. Those have to be the worst possible way to respond to criticism. Just because the Mario movie is a kids film doesn’t mean it has to abandon basic story telling. In a way, it’s like they agree with the haters that the film sucks and just say those things because they don’t want to feel insecure for liking mediocre films and it also comes of as very disrespectful to the movies they like.
It’s not just exclusive to the Mario movie, but other films too. I was checking out the RT scores for Black Adam and I was baffled how the movie has a high audience score (critic score is 39% while audience score is 88%). Many die hard comic book fans agree that the film sucks but it somehow the audience loves it (some of the audience reviews feels like it was made by bots). I find it hard to even trust audience reviews now, so now I just have to go in and see the movie myself. It feels like these people will either agree with the critics if the movie they hate has a low score, disagree if the movie they like has low score, or if the movie they like has the score they wanted. This is just dumb and these “animation is cinema” people need to stop acting like bitches.
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