The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023 | USA | 93 minutes | Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic)

The new Super Mario Bros. Movie is extremely cool to watch. The movie is fast-paced and the animation is seamless and the colors are vibrant, like playing a video game on an enormous TV. As it should be. A lot of money went into making this movie look cool. I wish for all of the money spent on the animation and top-tier voice talent, we got a better story. I’m not sure that matters, though.

In grade school, I probably spent more time playing Super Mario Bros. games on the original Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Nintendo than I spent in grade school but I haven’t played a Mario game in over 30 years. Little in the Marioverse has changed over that period as Mario and Luigi are still trying to save Princess Peach from the evil Bowser. Here they get help from Donkey Kong. 

Local press reviewing this movie got an e-mail warning against including spoilers in our coverage but I don’t think I would even know how to do that if I wanted to. The story is not much different from a typical Mario Bros. game. There are some easter eggs that reference past NES games and that’s good for a momentary hit of nostalgia. Overall, the movie is cute and fun but it’s paper-thin, and that’s a shame. 

The roster of actors providing their voices make for an incredible cast: Chris Pratt (Mario), Charlie Day (Luigi), Anya Taylor-Joy (Princess Peach), Jack Black (Bowser), Fred Armisen (Kranky Kong), Keegan-Michael Key (Toad), and Seth Rogen (Donkey Kong). People on Twitter were upset by Chris Pratt’s casting as the voice of Mario but he’s fine and he’s often in the middle of the dumbest online “controversies.” The scandal isn’t that the internet-certified Rotten Chris Pratt is in this movie, it’s that the actors aren’t even asked to do anything to add any sort of depth to their culturally-ubiquitous characters. Jack Black was probably the only actor who brought a sense of himself to his character. 

The Super Mario Bros Movie did entertain me for its 92 minute run time because it’s a feat of animation and it doesn’t give itself time to lag. I was often smiling throughout the movie, but that was ephemeral. It wasn’t long after I left the theater that I began to feel disappointed that we hadn’t gotten a better Mario Bros. movie than we have here. 

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The Super Mario Bros. Movie is in theaters now.