The story of the film is a braindead rehash of the same hero’s journey that people have been spooning up forever. Horvath and Jelenic spice it up with some impressive sequences befitting the film’s inspiration. Mario is an iconic character in a video game genre perfected by Nintendo, and in that spirit, the film is able to replicate the flow state of moving through a 2d platforming game with the run button held down. Three Stooges-esque scenes of plumbing mishaps evoke the always-welcome influence of Paddington. Outside of these larger set pieces, the comedic touches from writer Matthew Fogel are generally fine, with a memorable star creature celebrating its looming execution and the bleakness of life in a cheerful child’s voice. More of that character, and less of Mario hating the taste of mushrooms (because those are his main power-ups in the game. Do you get it, you moron?). On the voice cast side, Black’s performance is big and lusty, complete with a Tenacious D tribute song, and Day’s well-suited for Luigi’s panicky energy. Even Pratt, derided from the moment of casting announcement, does good work with a Mario who’s a fourth or fifth generation Italian American instead of Charles Martinet’s lovable Italian stereotype.
It's the Illumination influence that grates in the Super Mario Bros Movie. The Mario theme music can be recognized by some large percentage of the entire world. A cinematic score could be built off those notes and it occasionally pops up, but it’s overshadowed by generic adventure music intermixed with hits from AC/DC, A-Ha, and the Beastie Boys. Seth Rogen plays Donkey Kong, a character who now laughs like the stoner co-lead of Pineapple Express. Who is this for? Why are animation studios and Illumination especially given to this kind of one-for-the-parents pandering? I’ve recently been watching some Miyazaki movies, none of which treat the viewer as anything other than a human who can take in a movie regardless of their age. Those movies also don’t situate their female characters as flawless paragons, as this film does with Princess Peach. Mario has to complete a training obstacle course filled with many memorable items from the game. Peach compliments him on his slow improvement, though she nailed it the first time through as a small child. A day is quickly coming where the girlboss trope will become exactly as intolerable as its damsel-in-distress antithesis, if we’re not already there. What if female characters in all kinds of movies were just human, instead of a hacky statement on female strength indistinguishable from male strength?
Someone will eventually make a great film with a video game as its source material. Video games have gotten so good in recent years that its inevitable. What’s certain is that Illumination will never make a great movie, because they have no ambition to. Why bother when Minions can fart out a billion dollars of global box office, just as The Super Mario Bros Movie did? With access to Nintendo’s catalog of characters, these will keep coming, keeping theaters in business with a steady churn of C+ to D+ material while everyone sighs and takes their families, gripping their seat rests in fury at the calculated mediocrity in front of them. C