The Super Mario Bros. Movie
Year: 2023
Rating: PG
Length: 92 minutes / 1.53 hours
I’ll admit that I was skeptical about this movie going in. Some of the casting decisions were questionable, but I also knew Nintendo would have a much tighter hold on their intellectual property after Super Mario Bros. (1993). An animated take on a simple video game concept was the better way to go, but I also know Illumination has a reputation for somewhat “cheap” CGI movies. All this being said—nostalgia is a heck of a drug. The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) is bright, colorful, and a lot of fun to watch.
I felt like the character designs were definitely on-point—which wasn’t hard to do when Nintendo already has 3D models of almost every character that appeared in this movie (something the previous attempt at this movie did not have). While the plot was simple, it’s not like a game from 1985 really had that much plot to go off, anyway. If anything, they had to add a lot (like the Mario Kart segment) to pad out the runtime to be long enough. I also felt the choice of songs not from the video games ruined the feel of the movie for the portions where they were included. Either the songs clashed tonally with what was going on or were so cliché as to be groan-worthy.
Still, as a long-time fan of Nintendo, I appreciated all the little details that the team added. Whether you’ve played the old stuff or the newer games, there were probably quite a few references that you’d get. And while I had my doubts about some voices, a few—like Jack Black as Bowser—really nailed the feel of the characters. They played the nostalgia factor up quite a bit, but overall it was a fun popcorn flick.
A fairly good adaptation of a fairly simple game, I give The Super Mario Bros. Movie 3.5 stars out of 5.
1/2
