‘The Super Mario Bros Movie’ review: The video game tries to level up on the big screen, but in the end turns into a big bob-omb

Despite how often critics rail against the practice, there’s nothing inherently wrong with making a film adapting a piece of pre-existing IP. In theory, at any rate, pre-existing IP has characters and stories that have proven they work with a large segment of the population, so there’s no reason a cinematic adaptation of them shouldn’t work. What unfortunately happens too often when Hollywood goes about doing this, however, is that they end up doing the bare minimum: The IP characters and location get thrown into a well-worn plot, lots of IP references (to both the adapted IP and any other remotely tangentially-related IP) get thrown in to keep the fans happy, some mega-popular pop songs get sprinkled on top, and everybody laughs all the way to the bank. It’s frustrating as a fan, because it makes the film seem more like a cash grab, and makes the creatives behind the project look as though they understand the material’s place in pop culture better than they understand the material itself. Hollywood’s latest exercise in doing the bare minimum with pre-existing IP, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, meets a baseline level of competency that keeps it from being bad, but doesn’t do a whole lot to keep it on the side of good. It is utterly average in just about every way, so concerned with being inoffensive to everyone that it doesn’t concern itself nearly enough with actually being entertaining.

Brothers Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) have decided to strike out on their own and put all of their life savings into a charmingly corny local cable TV advertisement for their plumbing business, but seemingly everyone besides their mother thinks it was a waste. When attempting to prove their worth by saving Brooklyn from flooding, they end up in a long-abandoned section of the NYC sewer system, and while exploring a pipe get whisked away through a wormhole to another world. They get separated, with confident Mario ending up in the Mushroom Kingdom and scared Luigi in the Darklands. While the colorful Mushroom Kingdom is home to lots of cute little mushroom people like the helpful Toad (Keegan-Michael Key), the Darklands are ruled by Bowser (Jack Black), a turtle-dragon creature who in the film’s opening scene finds a Super Star that will grant him the power invincibility, and thus the ability to take over the world with Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) of the Mushroom Kingdom at his side as his bride. Now it’s up to Mario, Peach, and Toad to get help from the army of the Kong Kingdom to save the Mushroom Kingdom (and Luigi) from destruction.

This is more or less what the plot of a film based on the Super Mario Bros. video games would have to look like, at least in broad strokes. The games usually involve rescuing Princess Peach from Bowser’s clutches, but damsels in distress are so 1980s, and this is the year of our Lord 2023, so now we get a Peach who is both a skilled fighter and a great diplomat… except that she kind of isn’t. She’s certainly capable of fending for herself without needing a man’s help, but because this is Mario’s story, he’s the one who gets things done and saves the day in nearly every situation. Even poor Luigi’s storyline is sidelined to give more screen time to Mario – all the poor green-shirted guy gets to do is be fearful for his life until the final battle, when he does a complete 180 and is suddenly not afraid of anything for no reason at all. Mario may in fact be the only character in the film who actually functions as a character with a recognizable arc, although that arc is a bit fuzzy – he’s already confident in his abilities with good reason at the start of the film, and the only way the film challenges him at all is by putting him right smack dab in the middle of a geopolitical dispute in a fantasy world involving the hostile takeover of a kingdom of mushroom people by a fire-breathing spiky-shelled turtle with red facial hair, a situation which would surely make anyone question what they know about the world. But, as is usually the case in movies, Mario gets put through a training montage that boosts his confidence in his ability to succeed, and that’s that until the next obstacle where he must remember his training in order to succeed, and on and on like that until the final battle against Bowser.

The character of Bowser is emblematic of The Super Mario Bros. Movie’s bare-minimum approach. Black voices him with giddy commitment, making him feel like he should be an iconic animated villain, but the writing never gives him the big moment he needs to truly be iconic. The closest the film gets to being truly inspired is when it stops dead in its tracks for Bowser to sing a comic love song to Peach. It’s a no-brainer of an idea when you have Black in the recording booth, but the song itself is barely on par with the quality of a Tenacious D B-side, with Black providing all the laughs through his vocal performance alone. The script, by The Lego Movie 2 and Minions: The Rise of Gru scribe Matthew Fogel, simply doesn’t have funny enough jokes, and if Black was allowed to unleash his full power and ad lib, he must not have been very inspired when he did so, because Bowser’s dialogue adds up to little more than some half-hearted puns, clichéd villain lines about taking over the world, and lots of evil laughter.

While the bright, colorful animation is almost ludicrously over-detailed, the script as a whole feels underdone, with no real character arcs and no more than a few chuckles here and there. You could chalk this up to the fact that the film has clearly been produced with children as its target audience, but even by the standards of children’s films, it falls short. Despite some valiant vocal performances, the characters are flat (outside of Black, only Seth Rogen’s exuberantly cocky take on Donkey Kong has any real sense of fun), and since none of them are ever in any real danger, it’s difficult to get invested in their journey. The film does have some clever moments, like an early race to the brothers’ first plumbing job that emulates the side-scrolling platform games on which the film is based, and the aforementioned training montage, which effectively recreates the fun and frustration of learning and mastering how to play a video game like Super Mario Bros. The film is also dense with blink-and-you’ll-miss-it references to other classic video games, which will surely delight the devoted fans who will undoubtedly turn out in droves for the film’s opening weekend. 

It’s doubtful that any of them will treat The Super Mario Bros. Movie with the same reverence they do the video games, but it’s also unlikely that they’ll be truly disappointed with the film as a whole. It may not be great, or even all that memorable, but for all that it doesn’t do well, it at least gets the basics of a game of Super Mario Bros. on the big screen right. All things considered, you could count that as a win, but it feels more like a disappointment.

Grade: C+

Universal Studios will release The Super Mario Bros. Movie only in theaters on April 5, 2023.