Anyone who has seen the rise of the Video Game Movie Mediocrity will tell you that the 1993 Super Mario Brothers movie was a fumble at the start of a game. It was the precursor to how video games would be treated in films, for the most part, for the foeseeable future. The movie starring Bob Hoskins and John Liguizamo was not well beloved by critics and failed to land with audiences. There is a small fanbase for the movie, as it didn't lack charm or actual good material, it was just not the right movie for Mario. Given a different title and different character names, it would actually be looked at as a charismatic action comedy. No, though, this pretty much put a curse on the video game genre as a whole.
Could the 2023 movie make up for everything that went wrong with the original movie? Well, yes and no. There were certainly vast improvements on pretty much everything. It used the original initial plot from the original movie, which is honestly a good thing, as it gives an homage to the first film, while giving it the real game feel. It also has some amazing effects.
The world of the Mushroom Kingdom looks amazing. The different dimensions and the different places you see, even including New York City, look very good from a visual standpoint. It has a vast number of callbacks to things such as Gamecube, Duck Hunt, Donkey Kong Country and MarioKart! When it comes to Easter eggs, this movie is stuffed with them, no pun intended.
I could even look over the different choices for the voices. Seth Rogan and Chris Pratt wouldn't have been my first choices by any means, but they did bring in the real Mario voice for a cameo as Jump Man in the beginning. Again, with the references. One of the best voices in the movie, though, is another cameo from another reference. Anyone who has played Mario Galaxy will recognize the type of star that was in the dungeon with Luigi. That was one of the greatest laughs in the entire film and it's pretty exciting to think that they could give the movie treatment to Galaxy. Done correctly, that has the potential to be huge. Jack Black makes for a great Bowser, though this movie seems to mark his last great performance for at least a solid year after. His scenes are hilarious, though, especially with his wizard henchman.
Some things that didn't work, though, was I would have liked to see more of Mario and Luigi working together in this adventure. If there is a sequel, which there probably will be, they should definitely have them working as a duo. Another problem this movie had was with the gathering of Donkey Kong's army, only for all of that to crumble within the next scene. These easy wins and copouts just get lazy after a while and they could have had a much better Mariokart battle than that.
Mario and Donkey Kong worked fairly decently as a duo, but again, Luigi would have been better. Princess Peach is a good character, who is strong in her own right and commands respect while also being a genuinely nice person. She actually shares some decent story time with Mario and they form a good bond. Even Toad isn't completely hacked up and annoying as hell as he was in the Super Mario Brothers Super Show. Believe me, we'll get to that as soon as I feel like watching it again.
The ending and the rest of the film is fairly well done, though. This is a clear improvement over the 1993 movie and it is a long drink of water after a very dry desert of a box office. To see that they give Mario the Sonic treatment is a very good step forward for both video games and movies. May the Virtua Mushroom Kingdom reign supreme!
