Giant Bomb Presents: The Super Mario Bros. Movie SPOILERCAST

I had a great time with this movie. It doesn't transcend the source material, but it does justice to it and doesn't overstay its welcome. The voice cast (especially Jack Black and ATJ), the visuals, the score (less so the licensed rock music), the staging of all the sequences were great. This movie even came up with cool ideas I would like to see make it back into a game somehow, like a "boss battle" in Mario Kart or the fire flower Donkey Kong.

If you're an adult who does not know of or care about Super Mario and/or Nintendo, there's not much here besides a basic action adventure film aimed at younger audiences. Yet that being said it was sharp enough to keep my elitist grown ass man self amused for 92 minutes, and I think for kids not into Mario, this would be a fun primer to get them excited to play all sorts of Mario games past and present. I do hope there is a sequel, because this movie is good enough to have a follow-up that is more creative and fleshed out in terms of plot and character work.

Loved it. So many points where I looked up and went "this is so fucking good."

It's a kid's movie about Mario, so it was weird to see a backlash that it's not emotional enough or something. It's fun as hell, which is all I wanted and expected.

And it makes me even more sad that Sonic didn't use its game music. The original themes worked perfectly here.

I agree with the 3.5 sentiment. And yeah, probably spent most of my time in Brooklyn looking for background elements like Disk-kun and even a billboard for playing cards. BTW, Charles Martinet is not only Giuseppe but also credited as Mario’s Father in the family dinner scene.

In one bit of possible canonization, I took it that Jungle Land runs off of cart vehicles and that’s how they got introduced to the Mushroom Kingdom. Therefore, Diddy Kong Racing is the prequel series to Mario Kart.

I think I came away agreeing with all the points here but landing lower on my own scale. This is ranging like a 2 or 3 star movie for me.

This is way more one of those movies you put on to distract your kids for 90 minutes, and you maybe get more out of it the more you're a Mario fan. But it's just so thin as an actual movie. Every exchange is just kinda matter-of-factual. No character really has anything else going on.

And like, the high bar of animated family movies can be really high. The Lego Movie ends up being a really meta, genius movie that understands its subject matter in so many ways. Spider-Verse aims a bit older but really plays on peoples' relationship to Spider-Man. Even Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is for young audiences, but the gags are just so relentless and clever and funny that anyone can enjoy it. This just relies soooo much on the Mario iconography that there's nothing else there.

Like it doesn't have to be a Turning Red or Coco or something really emotionally affecting or personal, but its characters don't have any other layer to them. Or odd things like Mario kinda getting over being in the Mushroom Kingdom real fast. I just kinda liked the movie more when it was in Brooklyn versus when they actually get transported.

And all the Mario stuff is absolutely lovingly crafted - everything looks so good, moves so good, everything is really nicely visually realized, the posing and animation is great. There's nothing outright bad or wrong about this - it really is a pretty direct adaptation. But again, it's just really thin as a point-to-point adventure.

@shaanyboi: I don't know, the guys seem like they are talking about this movie with a pacifier. Like they're so afraid to say it like it is, they liked it because they saw mario things on screen. If sonic did that, they'd call it out for how it was just nostalgia bait. They should be like this for all the fan made for movies then. But instead when the one dude with his kid says he liked the Sonic 2 movie, he gets the mocking side eye...like sonic cant be good. Now online I see people also agree, sonic movie(s) was/were kinda better than mario's movie. Like they had a through line and references but also did their own thing and so on. To be fair, many online also say the mario movie had no theme or plot, but it's obviously stated it's about him becoming the hero he tries to be for his city and living up to his family and luigi is about confidence in himself which he gains via being and sticking with his brother...which (how did dan forget about him) the whole plot of the film is to go save him and stop whatever bowser was up to. To be fair, most will be like dan at best and love the references. double toasted did a great review in that, one person wasn't a mario fan, another was, and the mario fan disliked the movie while the non fan liked it given they could roll with the references and didn't know them, so they just saw it as a magical world to get into. Overall people think it's bare-bones, but that has a lot to do with (a good thing) people thinking kids movies can be great and adults can enjoy animated films. Like Pixar and Sony almost highered the bar (DreamWorks too) so much that we expect heart tugs...though I'm also wondering where that became the tale tale sign of a good film. You can have no heart tug moments and still be a good movie. I think they wanted to keep the movie light and with all the interference you have on a normal project i imagine Nintendo shaved all the edges off this for mass audience consumption since (it was 3/5 or 3.5/5) average scores are perfect for audiences vs 4/5 or 5/5 which may leave a loud minority group mad they got a story that didn't appeal to them. This leaves as we see, everyone recommending it mildly and everyone keeping expectations low and fans just enjoying it for what it is, references and a straight forward tale. Still think the crew is handling this with baby gloves, but they do call it out for flaws so who knows. Seems jeff is easier on it for example since he has kids and any kids' movie you get fine with since as long as it's not burning your eyes you're happy to have to put it in for the 30th time...dan wouldn't care if the entire movie was mario running through levels in galaxy, and jan seems kinda ok with it...didn't know he loved mario honestly lol.