(PG) ★★★
Director: Aaron Horvath & Michael Jelenic.
Cast: (voices of) Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key, Seth Rogen, Fred Armisen, Sebastian Maniscalco, Kevin Michael Richardson, Charles Martinet.
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| Tripping. Fucking. Balls. |
Let's get the voice thing out of the way. If you want to get pissed off about this movie purely because Chris Pratt doesn't sound like Mario from the games ie. a bad Italian stereotype, then I guess it's your right to get pissed off about stupid shit.
The film actually addresses the voice thing with some amount of wit and reverence at the start of the film by including the voice, and cameoing OG Mario voice actor Charles Martinet (who's American of French descent by the way) in not one, but two roles. You could argue about why didn't they a) hire an Italian or b) get Pratt to do "the Mario voice" for the whole movie, but seriously who gives a shit? What matters is whether the movie is any good or not.
So if you're gonna get pissed off about Pratt and the voice, fill your boots. There are plenty of legitimate things for you to be annoyed about in this film. Or you could take heart in the fact this is a fairly decent Mario movie that admires and celebrates its source material (including the voice in it's own way), and is kinda fun.
As you'd hope, the movie is the story of two down-on-their luck Brooklyn plumbers, Mario (Pratt) and Luigi (Day), who find themselves accidentally whisked away to mystical lands. Luigi ends up in the Dark Lands captured by the evil Bowser (Black), who is set on marrying Princess Peach (Taylor-Joy) so he take over the Mushroom Kingdom. Meanwhile Mario ends up in the Mushroom King and teams up with Peach to try to save Luigi and the world.
"Predictable" is the key word for this film, but that's not always a bad thing. It's predictable that the film would be a wishlist of stuff from the history of the Mario games - the characters, the villain, the music, the item boxes, the warp pipes; it's all here. And that's great. It's fan service, but it's to be expected, and it kinda works.
The story that is used to weld all these Easter eggs together is equally predictable, bordering on lazy in places, but again, not in a totally bad way. The film does the acceptable bare minimum in terms of its hero's journey and keeping the plot movie in a compelling way. Is it amazing and will it have you hanging on the edge of your seat? Absolutely not. Does it have power-up item boxes scattered throughout for reasons that don't make logical sense? You betcha. So, you know, fan service, but stretched to try and make the movie work.
In fact, the most obvious way to demonstrate how predictable and safe this film is can be found in the musical choices. Are there any more over-used songs in movies (especially family movies) than Can I Kick It?, No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn, Holding Out For A Hero, Mr Blue Sky, Thunderstruck, Take On Me, and Battle Without Honour Or Humanity?
But hey - it's ok for kids movies to be predictable and safe with 2D characters in a 3D world, I guess. Is this going to blow you away like a Pixar film or The Mitchells Vs The Machines (which also uses Battle Without Honour Or Humanity, yes I know) or Into The Spiderverse? No.
But it's bright and loud and shiny and fun in the way a lot of middle-of-the-road family animated movies are these days. It also happens to have the added cache of being recognisable to millions of people of all ages who will be stoked at the references, especially the musical ones (shout-out for the DK Rap getting a guernsey).
The Super Mario Bros. Movie treats its source material with respect, and has fun while doing it. And that's more than a lot of other video game movies.
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