by Nathan Braised
There’s been an upward trend with kid’s movies doing incredibly well with older audiences, and story writers pouring their heart and soul into a script about a grade-school topic.
“Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” , “Lightyear”, “Soul” and “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” just to name a few, have all been stellar pieces of cinema in recent memory. However, after watching “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” this Saturday, I have to say that it doesn’t fall into this category.
I was expecting a whole lot more than what it had to offer, and it just didn’t live up to the hype. The box office could care less about what a college student has to say about the movie, as it has already made over $500 million so far, so this lackluster review won’t be shutting down Illumination’s doors just yet.
No one likes spoilers, but I’ve got a family to feed, so here’s a spoiler-free summary: Mario and Luigi are working as independent plumbers in modern-day Brooklyn. Business is not doing well, and most people treat them as a joke, so the brothers take any job they can.
After coming upon a flooded city street, they track the problem underground and discover a very odd-looking pipe.
They both get sucked in and are transported across dimensions into the video game world. Luigi gets sent to a castle controlled by Shy Guys, and Mario lands in the Mushroom Kingdom, where Bowser is leading a destructive campaign to get Princess Peach to marry him or to destroy the kingdom. .A great strategy to get a woman to fall for you, by the way. Nothing says romance like ‘love me or I’ll destroy everything you hold dear.’
Critique time! The biggest thing that stuck out to me was how fast paced the movie is. I felt like 20 minutes had passed by the time they were setting up the final fight.
The plot was lackluster and simple, but it worked. Enough of the stuff I didn’t like, because there was a lot of stuff that I did like.
The comedy was upbeat, there was a plethora of callbacks to several of Mario games, and the casting was incredible. Keegan Michael Key absolutely crushed it as Toad, so much so that you can’t even really tell it was him most of the time. I’m guessing they pitched his voice up.
It was a super easy watch and is even better with friends. Also, the animation is spectacular. There were many times I was just thinking how long an animator spent on just one frame of the film.
Overall, it’s not a bad film, I just had very high expectations, and was a little disappointed. I still encourage everyone to go watch it if you can snag tickets.
Rating: 6/10 “Don’t goomba stomp me for this”
