The Super Mario Bros Movie 🍄 🎮 mini review:

I guess just about everyone I know and grew up with has a memory of playing one of the Mario games as a kid. For me, I went hard into Super Mario Bros 3 on the Gameboy Advance during my first trip to Israel at age 8 and obsessively played Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii during elementary school. So many fond memories all around with the Nintendo property. Now we are here, 30 years after the first (and failed) attempt to adapt the wacky world of Mario to the big screen. The Super Mario Bros Movie overcomes its thin plotting with bright, vivid, and colorful 3D animation, a stacked voice cast, and more nostalgic Easter eggs than you can count on two hands. Chris Pratt being cast as Mario was a source of controversy for many, but I have to admit he really did a solid job and his chemistry with Charlie Day’s Luigi was as funny as it was heartwarming. Both Mario and Luigi are blue collar workers running their family plumbing business and this was such a fitting and relatable starting point for the dynamic duo. At the end of the day, Mario and Luigi’s brotherhood is the heart of the movie. Anya Taylor Joy is pretty good as Princess Peach but it was Jack Black, perfectly cast as Bowser the King Koopa that completely stole the entire movie for me. Black injects his irresistible vocal talents to both menacing and humorous degrees throughout the movie, even at some points breaking out into full on Tenacious D mode. I haven’t been impressed with Seth Rogen all that much recently but I was surprised that he mostly worked as Donkey Kong and the DK fights were a major highlight. The Mario Kart sequences are exhilarating and will make the viewer feel as if they’re riding high on rainbow road. The platform fights and overload of nods to the games throughout said scenes come at a million miles per second, and will surely bring back childhood memories for many fans. A lot of credit must be given to the outstanding work the 3D animation artists put in to bringing the bright exuberant world of the Mushroom Kingdom and decadent world of the Dark Lands to glorious life. The music choices were hit or miss, as some of the needle drops have been used a million times in other animated movies like this, but there are a few that definitely work. One of the issues here is that Pratt’s Mario and Day’s Luigi work so well together, making it a bit unfortunate that they’re split up for the middle portion of the movie. Also, while the runtime is appropriately short and the pacing relentless, there could have been a couple minutes added on for some character moments and breathing room amidst the zany adventure. There is a mid and post credits scene, with the second one guaranteed to excite longtime Mario fans. Overall, despite its thin story, some redundant song choices, and odd narrative decisions, Illumination Entertainment’s The Super Mario Bros Movie is a simple and breezy 92 minute joyride that mostly captures the manic thrills of the Mario video games and is sure to give a vast majority of fans, young and old, a fun trip down memory lane.