After nearly 30 years, Nintendo is back with a Super Mario film. The animated feature The Super Mario Bros. Movie based on the iconic video game and its character, does not disappoint, mostly.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie’s plot is fairly elementary: while on a plumbing job, the Mario brothers are sucked (literally) into a video-game-like world. While Mario (Chris Pratt) has to find his brother Luigi (Charlie Day) and return to his own world, he, at the same time, has to help Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) save her Mushroom Kingdom from a villainous turtle Bowser (Jack Black).
Through its run-time of one and a half hours, the film does not lose steam. It is fast-paced, engaging and wastes no time. In the very beginning, when Mario parkours his way through an under-construction site with Luigi trailing behind, you know that Nintendo is not messing with you.
The flamboyant worlds of The Super Mario Bros. Movie are a delight to watch – from the fragile Penguin Kingdom to the expansive Mushroom Kingdom and Kongs’ lush Jungle Kingdom, Illumination delivers that meticulous attention to detail, and none would expect less from the makers of the Despicable Me series. The film has retained the essence of the video game by bringing to life its various elements – the brick breaking, question marks, ingesting mushrooms to increase or decrease in size. It is especially satisfying to watch the costumes of the characters change every time they encounter a flower power-up. When characters are about to enter one of those green pipes that suck them in, you find yourself waiting in childlike anticipation of where it will spit them out.
This one sequence of Mario learning the run-hop-skip-duck-jump drill, dodging obstacles and gaining power-ups, is reminiscent of the number of times players had to go through the same to get to the end and jump on the pole of a flag. Add to this the iconic music and sounds that pop in exactly where you want them to, and you are soon on the trip to nostalgia.
While there are visible flaws in the film and you are tempted to question the logic in some bits, as long as you are watching with a child’s excitement, you are good to go. The wafer-thin plot does not hurt as much as the corny dialogues, which are mostly a hit-and-miss. The writing of Mario and Luigi’s relationship is trite, and so is it with other characters and subplots in the movie. In one of the last scenes when Mario is beaten and has lost all hope, you’d expect something substantial that will get him to rise up, an epiphany even. Well, don’t. It’s as predictable as daily soap.
You’ll find bursts of humour throughout the film, and the animation cannot be more appealing. While the characters itself may seem trivial, the cliched emotional angle of proving one’s self is earnest. This movie does not attempt to do anything starkly different from the video game, yet succeeds in establishing its own distinct identity. The music is gratifying to the point that you’d feel there was still space to exploit it further.
Whether you are a Super Mario fan or not (although we hope you are one), the film entices you into fetching a retro Nintendo console and start playing on it right away! If not, you’d still want to listen to the game’s classic background score on loop.
For those who are still reading this review, here’s a heads up: There are two post-credits. A sequel? We hope so!
The animated film is created by Universal’s Illumination, and directed by veteran animators Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic. Matthew Fogel, well known for his work on The Lego Movie 2, has written the screenplay. It is produced by Mario’s creator Shigeru Miyamoto.