The Super Mario Bros Movie was one of my most anticipated movies of 2023. This surprised me because I’m a casual consumer of Mario media and don’t know much about it. However, the stunning visuals and the high-energy trailers I needed to see this film blew me away. I wasn’t without my apprehensions, though, like many others. Hollywood has typically had a rough time adapting video games to the big screen, and some of the voice actors were seen as questionable choices. Unfortunately, the film did fall into some of my apprehensions; however, it did what it needed to do, which was to be a fun and faithful adaptation.

The Super Mario Bros Movie starts with Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) as two ordinary guys struggling to make a profit being plumbers. Mario particularly gets a lot of flack from his family for choosing this route. When an opportunity arises for Mario to save the day as a plumber, things take an unexpected turn. This is where Mario gets transported into the Mushroom Kingdom and is separated from Luigi, who gets captured by Bowser. Mario must then team up with Toad (Keegan-Michael Key), Princess Peach (Annya Taylor-Joy), and many other allies to rescue Luigi and prevent Bowser (Jack Black) from taking over the Kingdom. 

It was interesting to see the story because Mario video games don’t have any. People play the games to have fun and get invested in the world, not to get a complex and investing story with Mario and the other characters. Most of the characters in that world barely say any actual pieces of dialogue and make a bunch of noises in the video. So, the movie surprised me as the story starts pretty intense, as we see a grounded version of Mario working as a plumber with his brother Luigi. The audience will quickly grow to relate with Mario as he’s choosing to be a plumber out of passion, even though it’s not an ideal career choice for him. The first fifteen minutes of the movie establish a great dynamic between the two brothers; Mario is the type of brother to stand up for Luigi no matter what, and you can see they have an inseparable bond. 

However, after the first fifteen minutes, the film starts to struggle because the beautiful dynamic between Mario and Luigi disappears as the two are separated for the rest of the film. The movie needed to establish more characters for Mario to bounce well off of. While the characters he meets later in the film are fun, they’re unfortunately not that well-developed, nor are the relationships between characters fleshed out enough. 

The pacing of the movie is probably the biggest issue. The film comes in at around 92 minutes, and it’s moving so fast that it seemingly doesn’t have enough time to flesh out the relationships between characters. Characters also seem to want to help Mario inexplicably without much persuasion or connection, and it feels pretty forced. If the film had another ten to fifteen minutes spread throughout to flesh things out better, we could’ve had a great movie. I’m not sure why Illumination and Nintendo opted for this concise length, too, because I don’t see people having an issue seeing an hour and 45-minute Mario movie or even a two-hour one. 

I don’t mind the story being simple and fast-paced; that’s precisely what I would want in a Mario movie. But when an account is simple, a film needs to compensate in other areas, such as the characters, and it unfortunately only did a decent job of that. However, I did love the story’s subversion that Luigi was the damsel in distress this time and not Peach. Building up a relationship I cared about in the first fifteen minutes between Mario and Luigi was a great idea because it made me care about Mario’s journey. If Bowser were trying to take over a Kingdom or even just captured Princess Peach, I wouldn’t have watched as much. 

Despite the story being a little weak, I found myself enjoying what I was watching throughout most of it. A lot of that is attributed to the directing and the excellent world-building. Directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic worried me at first because they don’t have many directing credits, and giving them such a big movie to helm didn’t seem like such a good idea. Thankfully, I was proven wrong. One thing they especially do well is crafting an expansive, imaginative, and immersive world that also pays great respect to its source material. The environments are constantly breathing with life, and you can probably look at the background of any shot and find something small to appreciate.

Another thing the Directors excelled at was the action sequences. A few sequences in the movie follow Mario in wide or extreme shots, which creates a great sense of environment while paying homage to its source material’s look and feel. Not only that, but also some pretty technically impressive one-takes that immersed me in action and the world it created. The world and the environment were so gorgeous that I wanted to get lost in the world for a longer time. 

Another thing that was technically done very well was the music/score. The composer (Brian Tyler) takes heavy inspiration from Koji Kondo’s original theme for Mario but can also make it more unique to this film. The score was excellent but underutilized in favor of various popular licensed music. This took me out of a few scenes, and I found the music to detract and remove me from the immersion. And this might be a hot take, but we must deter filmmakers from using Holding Out For A Hero by Bonnie Tyler or Take on Me by Aha for five years because it is extremely overused. Not only that, it just feels cheap using it because it’s such an easy way to create fun energy for a scene, and it simply feels lazy at this point.  The next thing I want to touch upon is the acting. 

I was not won over when the voice cast was announced because it largely felt like the studio wanted big names over actors that could do the characters justice, especially Chris Pratt. The trailers also did not do Pratt any favors, as it seemed like he was putting on a slightly altered voice to how he regularly sounded, and it was distracting. However, after watching the movie, he was a pretty good Mario. There’s a sequence that plays as an advertisement in the Film, and it was a pretty faithfully sounding Mario voice that I liked quite a bit; however, it’s not what Mario sounds like for the rest of the movie. I felt confused if Mario was supposed to have an Italian accent, a Brooklyn accent, or if he was just supposed to sound like Chris Pratt. All of the iterations sounder pretty good, but there’s this weird lack of consistency. 

The rest of the voice cast was generally pretty good, with the standouts being Keegan-Michael Key as Toad and Jack Black as Bowser. Those two actors transform into those roles and are borderline unrecognizable. The slightly distracting voices were Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong and Anna-Taylor Joy. There didn’t seem to be much of an effort to put a distinct voice on those characters, so whenever the characters spoke, I heard the actors, and that also ruined a bit of the immersion for me. Lastly, Charlie Day is pretty good as Luigi, and he bounces off well with Chris Pratt’s Mario, but I do have the same critique as I sometimes love Charlie Day’s performance, and other times, it just feels like Charlie Day talking. 

By the end of the movie, though, it’s safe to say that I had an enjoyable time watching it. I think the critical reviews of this movie are a bit harsh but not unjustified. There is a lot that could and should’ve been improved upon to make something extraordinary here. But I can’t help but say that I still enjoyed myself despite its flaws. With stunning visuals, great action sequences, fun characters, and plenty of homages to the games, there is a lot to love and have fun with in this movie despite some of its shortcomings. 

Score: 3.5/5

The Super Mario Bros Movie is an enjoyable and imaginative time at the theaters. If you’re not familiar with Mario, this won’t entirely be the movie for you. However, if you’re a casual or die-hard fan of Mario, there is much to enjoy. While you probably won’t be blown away by anything in this movie, it’s worth your time if you want to have fun for 90 minutes. The Super Mario Bros Movie is available in theaters now.