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Not Half as Fun or Interesting as the Worst Mario Game


The prevailing problem with video game movies is that video games can be fun to play but not very fun to watch. That interactive component is important to their appeal, and when taken away by an adaptation the experience risks being cheapened. And no movie quite epitomizes that like The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Mario has always had the thinnest of plots and even thinner characters, which is part of what’s made it arguably the most iconic video game in the world. But it is also what makes it particularly ill-suited to a movie, certainly any movie that wants to recognizably cater to its fans. Which this movie does A LOT! In retrospect there was a certain creative boldness to the infamous 1993 attempt, which at least tried to craft a story and some new character around the existing material, and which is entirely missing from this movie -at its best, merely a simulation of the game in its varied forms that the audience has no control over.
At it’s worst it is a fan-service dependent, obnoxious easy cash-grab of a nakedly manipulative kids movie -not out of keeping for Illumination, easily the loudest and most creatively shameless American animation studio. But The Super Mario Bros. Movie still feels uniquely awful in its shallow subject matter and utter lack of effort employed anywhere beyond the animation itself. This is a movie exactly as cynical and hollow as everyone predicted -flashy enough to momentarily entertain kids through its reminiscence of the games, but without any kind of compelling action or artistry to leave an impression. Just an inflated sense of its own significance bolstered by the surety of its brand success.
In a reprisal of one of the great terrible I.P. kids movie clichés of the last decade (that had seemed to disappear in recent years), the movie opens on Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) as real-world Brooklyn plumbers, who play up stereotypical Italian accents for their business commercial (and even rap), and are disappointments to their even more stereotypical family. The brothers  soon get sucked through a portal in a sewage pipe that takes them to the magical Mushroom Kingdom -though Luigi gets separated and winds up a prisoner of the villain Bowser (Jack Black). Soon with the help of the kingdom’s Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy), Mario sets out on a mission to rescue his brother.
You might notice that sounds like the basic premise of Mario as we all know it, just with the roles of Luigi and Peach reversed. Indeed Luigi is for the most of the movie the very typical damsel in distress who does nothing but worry and wait for Mario to rescue him. Peach on the other hand is given the full girlboss treatment -elevated to that kind of one-note impeccably capable action heroine so typical of a studio mandate that wants to look feminist without putting in any real effort towards meaningful feminine representation; simply one vapid and condescending archetype exchanged for another. As for Mario himself, he occupies the same essential role he does in the game, albeit without much discernible agency. For a while, he is the sidekick to Peach, his goal the side issue next to the threat of Bowser invading the Mushroom Kingdom and forcing Peach into marrying him. Yet the movie grasps at the idea that it’s the relationship between the two brothers that is the central emotional theme.
This, like every aspect of narrative tension or weight is frequently ignored in favour of recreating game imagery, references, and mechanics. The Super Mario Bros. Movie is one of those kids movies that openly sees its tools of narrative and character as merely obligatory, and can’t wait to move on to just more visual gameplay or mundane humour about Bowser’s pathetic infatuation with Peach. It’s almost funny how after laying a semi-relatable groundwork (the first active set-piece takes place in the bathroom of a New York penthouse) and giving the characters casual snappy voices meant to evoke modernity, the movie moves through its gaming levels with no regard for any kind of natural cohesion whatsoever. At the close of the Donkey Kong sequence Peach might as well have just stated “let’s play Mario Kart now”, and it would have been no less immersively jarring. The most flagrant example of this has to be Peach producing the standard Mario obstacle course with all of its arbitrary bells and whistles and floating question-mark-box power ups as a simple test of his abilities. Mario the franchise has a lot of discordant elements, obstacles, rules, and play features that are strengths for the game but prove to be weaknesses for any alternative medium adaptation; and this movie really shows how that world cannot withstand a multi-dimensional portrayal. There’s no stakes, no purpose. It’s all too inconsistent, too convoluted, too much like a video game.
And perhaps… too much like a theme park. It’s no secret part of the reason this movie exists now and not several years ago is to tie in to the opening of Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Hollywood, which had its official launch a month ago. Just about every sequence in the movie that represents a particular version of the Mario I.P. is structured at least to some degree as an amusement park attraction. The characters ride a roller coaster into Donkey Kong’s Jungle Kingdom, Rainbow Road is of course obvious as a race car track for which as in the game you can design your own vehicle -it’s not particularly subtle. These bits are singled out by their select use of fairly random pop needle-drops: “Holding Out for a Hero”, “Thunderstruck”, and probably the most offensively mediocre use of “Take On Me” I’ve ever seen. Of course they could also just represent the filmmakers getting bored, and looking for something to attach to those sequences that most resemble just watching a game being played.
The voice acting is just tedious, the classic voices only featuring as an affect meant to be taken as a lame stereotype. Nobody is giving their A material here, least of all Chris Pratt who sounds as uninterested as can be. It’s very strange too hearing the instantly recognizable voices of Charlie Day, Jack Black, and especially Seth Rogen, who voices Donkey Kong, coming out of the mouths of these iconic video game characters. None of them fit, even with the characters rewritten around their star personas -especially Black’s Bowser (I like to think I’m an apologist for Jack Black, but this movie really showcased effectively why he’s so annoying to many). And Keegan-Michael Key as Toad is so unrecognizable I’m sure his voice is modulated for the part, bringing to mind the pointlessness of casting celebrities in those Chipmunks or Smurf movies from a decade ago, only to completely distort their voices anyway. It’s a great movie to point to as proof of the devaluing of professional voice actors in the industry.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is getting a pass by some for being a kids movie, bringing up the old argument about whether to take the quality of kids movies seriously. There were a lot of kids at my screening and they seemed to be having a good time (one even clapped at the end). But they’ll go home and play their Mario games and likely realize how much more fun that is than watching the movie -which will probably fade from memory by the end of the year. Of course with its onslaught of references, easter eggs, and fan service to Mario’s history, going back to even the earliest entries of the game, it’s fair to say the movie is aimed at nostalgia-baited adults as well -who beyond the micro thrill of getting to point like the DiCaprio meme when something they recognize comes up, probably won’t find much to enjoy here with the paper thin writing and characters, the half-assed themes of brotherhood and proving oneself. In terms of its visuals alone it is certainly the most accurate video game adaptation so far, but with this kind of a format transfer that doesn’t mean much -in fact it drives home all the more how the interactive element is so key to this series’ success.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie will likely be the most successful animated film of the year; it will probably spawn imitators. But it is also the most cogent example yet of the limitations of film on the video game medium. It’s likely to be a very dull sub-genre, if they all follow in its footsteps.

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