Glitch

My thoughts on The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

While I didn’t review it at the time, I know that I saw The Super Mario Bros. Movie, the animated cinematic adaptation of the extraordinarily popular Nintendo game franchise that went on to gross over a billion dollars worldwide, coming in second only to Barbie as the world’s highest-grossing film of 2023–I even have it logged onto the list I always keep of all the new releases and theatrical presentations that I view every year. However, while I remember seeing it, I do not have any real memory of anything that happened during it and while part of this could admittedly be the result of my increasing dotage, I suspect the blank I am drawing was more likely due to the film being more than a noisy and overly frantic spectacle existing for no other reason than to separate family audiences from their money while providing them with what wasn’t actual entertainment so much as it was a crude simulacra of it. That is certainly the case with The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, a witless endeavor that exists for one reason only—to hopefully bring in another billion or so into the coffers of Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment. I have no doubt that it will accomplish that goal, which is great if you happen to work in the accounting departments at Universal or Illumination but not so much if you are a parent who would prefer taking their kids to see a movie that was more than just an extended commercial designed to turn the minds of the young ones to mush so efficiently that the crazy mask maker from Halloween III might bow to it out of sheer admiration.

As the film opens, we see Princess Rosalina (Brie Larson) sitting down to read a bedtime story about the beloved adventures of brothers Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) to the Lumas, a horde of adorable star-like creatures for whom she serves as an adoptive mother when she is attacked and kidnapped by a giant robot piloted by Bowser Jr. (Benny Safdie), the angry young son of Bowser (Jack Black), the blowhard monster who caused all the trouble in the first film and who now remains imprisoned in miniaturized form under the guard of the brothers back in the Mushroom Kingdom. When word of Rosalina’s kidnapping arrives at the Mushroom Kingdom, the fierce Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy), who feels a strange and mystical connection with her, ventures out into space, along with aide Toad (Keegan-Michael Key), in order to rescue her. Before too long, Mario—who wants to ask Peach out on a date but is too darn shy to do so—and Luigi, accompanied by their new friend, an adorable dinosaur-like creature named Yoshi (Donald Glover), and Bowser, who swears that he has changed his ways, set off in pursuit, where they get involved in all sorts of wacky adventures that find them, among other things, being transformed into baby versions of themselves and encountering slick mercenary pilot Fox McCloud (Glenn Powell).

Considering the fact that I have not really followed any aspect of the Mario Brothers Universe outside of the original game, the previous animated film and, of course, the infamous live-action film from 1993 with Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper all embarrassing themselves thoroughly, have, as stated, no conscious memory of The Super Mario Brothers Movie and am decades removed from the age of the targeted audience, it could be argued that I am perhaps not qualified to give The Super Mario Galaxy Movie a fully informed review. This is a fair point, I suppose, and I am sure that there will be plenty of reviews online from people who are intimately familiar with every aspect of the MBU. Even so, a film like this still needs to at least try to provide some kind of basic entertainment for those not fully versed in all things Nintendo as well as the hard-core fans and that is not the case here. The story hurtles from one incident to the next without ever giving viewers a chance to figure out what is going on. None of the characters are particularly interesting and, with the exception of Black, who invest Bowser with his usual bluster, the mostly impressive cast of actors deliver their lines with the kind of fierce commitment one normally associated with the likes of Krusty the Klown. The action sequences are noisy and flashy but nearly impossible to follow, the scenes in between those action beats are utterly nondescript (they feel as if they have been put in to encourage an additional trip to the snack bar) and it doesn’t so much end as it does just run out of energy in the manner of a kid finally crashing after eating a pound of Pixie Stix.

Will The Super Mario Galaxy Movie appeal to the children for whom it is clearly intended? Probably—it is bright and colorful and loud and silly enough to entertain, or at least distract, them for 90-odd minutes. That said, it does nothing more than that and the sheer laziness on display in regards to creativity is borderline embarrassing—unlike the best movies aimed for family audiences, it doesn’t offer them anything to hold on to once the end credits roll except for promotional crap for them to beg their parents to buy. Look, I confess that I did not quite get that K-Pop Demon Hunters thing but even so, I could still recognize that it was trying to do something a little different that viewers young and old sparked to and helped to make it a legitimate global phenomenon. This film, on the other hand, is little more than a feature-length visual babysitter and if that is all you want, then you may enjoy it more than I did. Personally, I wanted more and I like to think that if I had seen it back when I was a little kid, I still would have come away from it wanting more.