“Let’s a-go” is what The Super Mario Bros. Movie lives by. Clocking in at a brisk 90 minutes, directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic (Teen Titans GO! To the Movies) send the audience running, jumping, throwing, smashing and racing through a medley of Mario worlds and Nintendo nostalgia. And if you are expecting anything more than that…you will be displeased for sure. Fans of the Super Mario Bros. games spread across all age brackets, though Illumination’s newest animation is surely more for the kiddos than us grownups. Keeping that in mind – families will have a field day with this. The movie doesn’t have that “Wahoo!” energy, but there’s a good dose of fun that can’t be discounted – hence making it fairly easy to enjoy for what it is.
Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) have a new plumbing business and waste no time rushing to save Brooklyn from a huge water leak. However, they instead get tunneled into another world where the two brothers get separated. Luigi drops in to the Badlands where Bowser (Jack Black) is king while Mario goes to Mushroom Kingdom. It’s there where he meets up with Toad (Keegan-Michael Key) who takes him to see Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) as she’s preparing to stop Bowser (who’s in possession of the Super Star) from ruling the world.
If Mario is going to follow her into battle and rescue Luigi, he’s going to need to learn some skills and hit up those Mystery Boxes. And he’ll need all the help he can get when they set off to the Jungle Kingdom to persuade Donkey Kong (Seth Rogen) and the Kong army to join in their fight to stop Bowser’s quest to conquer. But Bowser isn’t that awful of a Koopa, is he? He sings about marrying Princess Peach and ruling together forever. He’s just a hopeless romantic with a little bit of jealousy under the shell, that’s all.
The animation is beautiful and bright, the voice cast is excellent, and the score by Brian Tyler is glorious, integrating much of the Mario themes we adore. These components luckily more than make up for a rather lame and hurried story that has hardly any substance. And contrary to popular belief, Pratt’s Mario voice isn’t terrible, either. It’s not what we are used to, but there’s justification for that early on in the movie. Lumalee (Juliet Jelenic) is the funniest character, unloading a nice chunk of cuteness and crazy while being one of Bowser’s prisoners. But Black bringing the fire to Bowser is the best. He’s rocking out for world domination and, of course, for love.
Despite The Super Mario Bros. Movie not aiming too high to entertain and a lot of its jokes missing the mark – it still does enough to capture the spirit of the Mario games. At the end of the day that’s what we want most. If Horvath and Jelenic didn’t at least deliver that, then they might as well go on ahead and shave Mario’s mustache off while they’re at it. It would have been the ultimate betrayal.
Brandon Vick is a member of The Music City Film Critics’ Association and the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the resident film critic of the SoBros Network, and the star of The Vick’s Flicks Podcast. Follow him on Twitter @SirBrandonV and be sure to search #VicksFlicks for all of his latest movie reviews.
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