The Super Mario Bros. Movie Review: 64-bit Visuals with an 8-bit Plot

Ken Jones, OnScreen Blog Chief Film Critic

Nintendo’s Mario is one of the most iconic video game characters due to generations of kids growing up playing as the mustachioed Italian plumber as far back as the original Donkey Kong arcade game and up on through the various NES gaming systems through the subsequent decades.

Having a built-in fanbase, it seemed inevitable that we would eventually get an animated movie adaptation at some point, despite Nintendo’s apparent reluctance to dip their toes into the movie business after the debacle of a live-action adaptation that came out in 1993, Super Mario Bros. Partnering with Universal and Illumination, the pairing behind the Despicable Me/Minions franchise, Nintendo is presenting the first in what is likely to be a long procession of new video game adaptations in The Super Mario Bros Movie.

The film features a talented voice cast in Chris Pratt as Mario, Charlie Day as his brother Luigi, Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, Jack Black as Bowser, Keegan-Michael Key as Toad, and Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong. Mario and Luigi find a hidden tunnel in the sewers of the Bronx that transports them to the world of the Mushroom Kingdom, where Bowser captures Luigi, and Princess Peach enlists Mario to help save the Kingdom from Bowser’s attempt at taking it over.

The influences of the video games and the various easter eggs throughout the movie will be readily apparent to fans. The movie pulls from almost every property Mario has ever been attached to, except for maybe Mario Tennis, Mario Golf, and Dr. Mario (though I may have missed those references). The Mushroom Kingdom is built with a warp pipe transportation system and various floating platforms. Princess Peach trains Mario on an obstacle course heavily shaped by the various items you find in a typical Mario Bros level, including a flagpole at the end. The various power-ups, mushrooms, flowers, and various suits are incorporated into the proceedings.

The tie-ins to the video games are pretty seamless for an animated kids’ movie and for any Nintendo gamer with any inkling of nostalgia. This is good because while the animation is state-of-the-art, the plot is stuck in the 8-bit era. This storyline is about as rudimentary as you can possibly get. There is little more to the story other than what you will find in the basic storyline of the original video games.

I recall one of the complaints lodged against The Lego Movie by its detractors was that it was just sensory overload to the tenth degree; that is more applicable here than with that movie. This movie is, as Shakespeare wrote in Macbeth, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” It is active, boisterous, loud, and frenetic in pace at times, but empty calories and not really amounting to much by the end. As a friend told me after taking his kids to see the movie, “It happened to my face and ears.”

There are meager attempts made at creating lessons in the movie. Mario is constantly reassuring his frightened brother Luigi that they’re better together and can do anything together. Mario and Donkey Kong are frenemies who bond over their disapproving fathers.

Despite the movie's drawbacks, there are some entertaining elements beyond just the gameplay nostalgia and the classic musical cues from the games. Bowser’s menacing plan to take over the Mushroom Kingdom is revealed ultimately to be an elaborate plot to get her to marry him because he has a crush on her, and this is his ham-fisted way of trying to win her over. With Jack Black voicing the character and featuring an original song called “Peaches”, this is played for effective laughs.

What elicited the most laughs from me, though, was an oddly nihilistic Luma that is imprisoned alongside Luigi in Bowser’s dungeon, named Lumalee. This star-like creature emitting a blue glow is voiced by Juliet Jelenic, the daughter of one of the movie's co-directors, Michael Jelenic, and wants to embrace its demise to escape its imprisonment fully. Hilariously dark and disturbing dialogue in a sweet child’s voice is a surprisingly funny choice I did not see coming from this very family-friendly movie.

If the 1993 live-action adaptation of Super Mario Bros was a wild departure aesthetically from the games it was based on, 2023’s The Super Mario Bros Movie loyally clings to the source material. This is likely the first of many Nintendo adaptations coming over the next several years. All the elements that have made the Mario gaming experience appealing for 40 years and counting are in there to be seen and heard and experienced but experienced secondhand, which doesn’t compare to the firsthand experience of actually playing the games. And there are no powerups to elevate the storyline beyond the video game source material. If expectations were a difficulty level, set yours on “easy” with this one.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars