Year:  2023

Director:  Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic

Rated:  PG

Release:  April 5, 2023

Distributor: Universal

Running time: 92 minutes

Worth: $16.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth

Cast:
Chris Pratt, Charlie Day, Seth Rogen, Anya Taylor-Joy, Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key, Fred Armisen (voices)

Intro:
While the incredibly tired array of licensed music can cause more than a few eyerolls, the eye-candy visuals, lean-and-mean pacing, and otherwise fantastic soundtrack make for a bright and colourful voyage into the Mushroom Kingdom.

The Minion dominion of Illumination Studios has had to endure a number of flops in the last few years. The entirely unnecessary Grinch do-over, the underperforming sequels to Secret Life of Pets and Sing, the empty geo-pandering of Minions: The Rise of Gru; not since their ill-advised film version of The Lorax has their pedigree been on such shaky ground.

And with the reception to the casting of Chris Pratt in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, things were looking grim. Enter directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, creators of Teen Titans Go! (and lowkey, the best DC superhero film of the 2010s, Teen Titans Go! To The Movies), who have seen fit to give the studio a much-needed green mushroom.

They and writer Matthew Fogel (along with UniKitty!’s Ed Skudder as head of story) avoid the initial mistakes of rival mascot Sonic the Hedgehog, as this is packed wall-to-wall with the aesthetics, mechanics, and even some of the fan lore from Mario’s lengthy video game history.

Managing to make everything from the ‘80s arcade games right up to Bowser’s Fury cohere into a single universe is simple enough, but kudos for also managing to pull them all off as spectacle without just making the audience want to reach for their controllers.

From the pipe travel to the power-ups to the kart races (Rainbow Road has never looked better), the mad lads at the former Mac Guff absolutely nail the design aesthetics and create gleeful fun in the action sequences.

The voice cast don’t slouch either, with even the much-memed Pratt as the red plumber handling the material suitably. Anya Taylor-Joy rocks it as Princess Peach, Keegan-Michael Key pulls off Toad’s screechy voice without it becoming unbearable a la the cartoon series, Seth Rogen has a lot of fun as DK, and Jack Black as Bowser… okay, it goes beyond him simply being a surprisingly good fit for the character, but as we see more of him and his theatrical and incel-ish mannerisms, it becomes clear that, for this Legend Of The Seven Stars-on-roids version of the character, he’s probably the only one who could make it work this well.

While the film mainly focuses on stringing its many, many set pieces and references together, the story being told isn’t half-bad either. It takes the arcade trial-and-error ethos behind the NES era, and directs that towards Mario himself, creating a character arc about being resilient and getting back up again, no matter what gorillas or bull-turtle-dragons knock you down. It’s simple, but it adds another layer to the film’s faithfulness to the source material.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is as much a tribute to Mario’s five decades’ worth of adventures as it is to the fans who have experienced them at their Nintendo Hard-est. While the incredibly tired array of licensed music can cause more than a few eyerolls, the eye-candy visuals, lean-and-mean pacing, and otherwise fantastic soundtrack make for a bright and colourful voyage into the Mushroom Kingdom. It looks Illumination has come back into the light.

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