When this movie was rumored and eventually properly announced, my excitement was basically at zero. We already had a perfect Mario movie back in the 90s that is unironically really fun even though it’s only a Mario movie in name, and this was being made by Illumination… who didn’t make very good things in my limited exposure to them (I’ve only seen bits and pieces of the Despicable Me movies, and those weren’t… very convincing).

But trailers happened and they were weirdly solid, the movie came out in theaters and the reception was wildly positive… so I picked it up when it came out on Blu-Ray.

So let’s see if it’s good why don’t we!

The good

The movie tells the story of Mario, who just started the Mario Bros plumbing business with his brother Luigi, struggling a bit. He sees a great chance to get some notoriety when Brooklyn is being flooded by a sewer issue, so he and Luigi head to fix it. When getting into a weird part of the sewers, Luigi disappears when going into a giant green pipe, and Mario goes to find him just to get sucked into it, bringing him to the Mushroom Kingdom. He knows Luigi was send over to the dark lands, but a nearby Toad leads him to the one person that could help him save Luigi, Peach. So after training a bit to handle power-ups and platforming, they head to the Kong kingdom to get an army to fight Bowser, who recently destroyed the Penguin kingdom and found the Super Star power-up. And that’s kinda about it as far as story without just saying everything that happens.

The first thing you’ll notice with this movie is how fucking good it looks. Just colorful and vibrant and detailed to the extreme. And so well animated as well, it’s actually wild how good this movie looks. It’s way more of a visual spectacle than what I expected when this was announced. Also I like how the characters look. There’s slight changes in character design but I think it works and overall the characters are very recognizable.

The music choice is great. There’s a lot of remixed Mario music which is what I was really hoping would happen. While there are bad moments (see below), overall this movie sounds amazing. It’s all remixes and such, and there’s a take on the Mario Rap from the Super Mario Bros Super Show as well as a remix of the DK Rap… definitely some deep cuts.

The Mario Bros commercial bit is fucking funny.

I love how simple the plot is. Mario must save Luigi (and, later, Peach), learns to deal with the new world he falls into and powers he gets there, has a few obstacles to go through, and fights Bowser. Fucking fantastic. Mario is not a series of deep involved plots, and this keeps it as simple as possible, while being a complete love letter to the franchise. It’s rare in today’s Hollywood to have movies from known franchises to be made by people who actually love that franchise and respect it… but also to not be 2 and a half hours of movie that could be told in half that.

I also like how they don’t linger on anything for even a second. While they COULD’VE wasted time explaining stupid shit, they actually respect the viewers and figure they’ll understand what’s going on just by looking at it. There’s one spot near the end where they could’ve shown Toad going to get something, but that would’ve just been wasted time.

The characters are solid. I was worried about a few of them, but no, they’re fantastic. We sadly don’t get too much Luigi but he has some good jokes and is allowed some badassness by the end. DK is good and has a fun personality despite being voiced by Seth Rogen. Bowser is just absolutely fantastic, Jack Black does a good job, but he’s also shown as this absolutely powerful force that is definitely to be feared… probably better than in the games, in fact. Peach is great. Clearly very strong and confident, but also not a big piece of shit about it, and willing to ask for the help she needs instead of thinking she can just win on her own. And Mario is just lovable and trying his hardest and never giving up no matter how much the odds are against him… Toad’s cool.

The movie has these cool side-scrolling segments, I like them a lot.

The references are nice. I already mentioned the DK Rap and Super Mario Bros Super Show rap, but there’s stuff from all across oldschool Nintendo, a whole lot of little things from Mario all over the place even up to Odyssey, and there’s even a reference to the 1993 Mario Movie in there. If you like looking for references, there’s a bunch there.

The meh?

I REALLY like Jack Black as Bowser, and I love how he’s introduced as this massive threat that is able to single-handedly take over a kingdom… But then I find that he has a bit too many of these kinda goofy moments that make him less threatening. I’m not talking about Peaches, Peaches is not a problem and helps for motivation, but there’s a moment or two that didn’t really do it for me.

I find Cranky’s VA to be kinda… bored-sounding. This is usually a problem with anime voice actors where literally all male voice actors sound like they don’t give a shit… Cranky’s definitely the weakest performance in the movie.

They kinda forget that Brooklyn was getting flooded by a problem in the sewers, even though that’s the inciting event of the movie, Mario and Luigi going to fix what is causing that flood. Later in the movie we get back to Brooklyn, but there’s none of that to be found. I guess the city workers fixed it, but it’s kinda weird that it’s just not mentioned or referred to at all.

The use of licensed music is bad. Mario has a TON of music to draw from, and they use it extremely well in this film, it’s great. But there’s also these really shit moments that give me the impression this was Illumination doing what Illumination does. When they get to Kong Kingdom or whatever it’s called, there’s a monkey that drives them to the castle in a kart. For some reason, during that short driving segment, Take On Me is playing… Why? It doesn’t fit at all with what’s going on screen. The Holding Out for a Hero scene is fine, just a bit too generic of a music choice. When they’re building their karts, Thunderstruck plays… why? Doesn’t fit. This push for licensed music almost ruined the end of the movie, where they were intending to use Jump by Van Halen… thankfully they changed Jump out for a really nice remix of a famous Mario tune. That would’ve been fucking horrible, thankfully someone at the studio managed to talk some sense into people.

I didn’t like the dog scene. I get why it’s there, but it’s just a bit too goofy for what it’s trying to convey. Might be the one part of the movie that lasts just a bit too long.

Overall

This was a really fun movie. It’s not long, it doesn’t overstay its welcome, it has really fun action scenes, the acting is solid for almost every character, and if you’re into recognizing references, this has plenty. It also looks beautiful. And it’s extremely faithful to Mario as a franchise, paying respect to it instead of trying to change what we like about it.

My complaints are extremely minor in the grand scheme of things. Yeah the Take On Me scene is dumb, but whatever.

I don’t know if we’ll get more Nintendo movies (and frankly I hope it doesn’t get to Marvel levels where we’re getting several a year and they all suck while shitting on what we liked about them in the first place), but, if we do, I hope they keep up with what worked in this movie. Respect for the source material, straight/to-the-point plot, solid characterization, amazing visuals… Just a good fun time.

COMPLETE TANGENT: The 1993 Mario Movie

That movie is good. I actually rewatched it recently (when the new Mario movie was in the theaters). It gets a bad rep, for good reasons I think. It was meant to be a Mario movie, and it really wasn’t. It really has nothing to do with Mario other than the fact that the characters are named after Mario and Mario-related things, and there’s a few visual references here and there. It was probably a bit too weird for kids to appreciate back in the day as well.

But if you remove Mario from the equation, it’s kinda just another pretty decent 90s action flick, this one using some cyberpunk-ish vibes and a really weird scene of “Mario” trying to get a necklace out of between some big black woman’s tits (also she’s meant to be Big Bertha from Mario 3). And also that weird scene where they get goombas to dance in the elevator.

But the characters are decent, the action scenes are entertaining, and it looks really cool.

Watch this movie. It’s available for free on the internet archives (it’s an extended version though so it drags out a bit). Whether you’ve seen it back when it came out (like I did) or not, it’s worth a watch/rewatch.

Really a shame they never made a sequel to resolve that cliffhanger (there’s a fan comic… but that’s not what I want).