

Movie, as expected, feels totally out of touch with what the cast actually ended up delivering: enthusiastic performances that bring life to the characters, with no real weak link among them. The interminable Discourse surrounding the voice acting in The Super Mario Bros.
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Movie could’ve slipped into “generic animated movie” territory had it given way to more of these low-hanging stabs at making sure Uncle Jack has his “I understood that reference!” moment, too. That goes double for the writers being unable to resist the urge to have Donkey Kong himself saying “it’s on like Donkey Kong.” Moments like this - as well as the frequent use of slo-mo to highlight jokes - are a bit too cute, and hint at how easily The Super Mario Bros. A little “No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn” as Mario and Luigi parkour their way through the borough never hurt anyone, but by the time Mario and Peach are being karted around the Jungle Kingdom to A-Ha’s “Take On Me,” you may find the needle drops being a little too much of a snap back to reality. Kind of like someone stealing a star from you in Mario Party, the fantastic score makes the pop tracks that are shoehorned in feel lazy by comparison. The movie’s mostly excellent use of its source material does contrast with some ill-advised blockbuster animation tropes which can occasionally be grating.
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The Mario series has some of the most recognizable music cues in gaming history, and Tyler deploys many of them throughout the action just where you hope they’d drop. Brian Tyler’s bombastic score takes care of the musical side of this equation, perfectly expressing the grandeur and whimsy of the games’ tracks at every turn and mining Koji Kondo’s original orchestrations to great effect. Bowser’s fire-versus-ice siege of the Penguin Kingdom, the expansive fungi vistas of the Mushroom Kingdom, and the lush greenery of the Kongs’ Jungle Kingdom are all super-saturated dreamscapes that coalesce into a bustling world begging to be explored further. Movie’s visual vibrance sets a very high bar for the other animated video game adaptations which will surely follow, be that from Nintendo or another studio.

Once you’ve already bought in to things like that, giving 10 minutes of the movie up to staging a big-budget Mario Kart race so that a trek from A to B feels a little more lively is an easier pill to swallow.
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The movie trusts its audience isn’t going to care much about why platforms float, or why there are blocks with question marks all over the place full of power-ups that turn people into cats and flamethrowers. At worst, sequences like the Rainbow Road race can feel a bit tacked on when they don’t fully make the case for being there with any kind of logical reason (being able to sell movie-branded Mario Kart toys doesn’t count), but then logic is not a currency anyone’s expecting The Super Mario Bros. Movie’s heavy use of references isn’t a good thing in and of itself, but their inclusion feels justified because they are used in ways that feel relevant and organic to the world. Movie manages a great balance of accessibility for general audiences and inside jokes for those of us who’ve dipped in and out of the series over the years. Movie almost always has an inventive in-world solution to whatever problem pops up that relies on something easily recognizable from the games, but never withholds explanation of how that thing works (even if the why goes rightfully ignored.) Whether it’s recreating the path of World 1-1 as Mario and Luigi parkour their way through Brooklyn or the pre-emptive giggle fans will get seeing Mario ingest a blue mushroom instead of a red one during a fight, The Super Mario Bros.
