The Super Mario Bros. Movie Review: Nintendo's Big Screen Adventure Thrives On Being Unsurprising

For some people, perhaps, it will be a point in the win column that "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" is exactly what it looks like, and nothing more. The long-awaited adaptation of the massively popular worldwide video-game franchise, courtesy of Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment, is a rare case of the marketing lining up perfectly with the finished product. That makes sense, too, considering how much of the success of "Super Mario Bros." as a video game series is as much about how the games are advertised as it is about the actual games themselves. "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" brings together the many recognizable characters of the franchise, the musical flourishes, the colorful design, and even some replication of familiar gameplay, into a brisk 90-minute package that is as critic-proof as it is largely uninspiring. (This movie is destined to make a billion dollars, whether critics give it a pass or not.)

The exceedingly straightforward narrative spends only a few relatively arduous minutes on the setup, which mostly takes place in a facsimile of the real world. That's where we first meet brothers Mario and Luigi (voiced by Chris Pratt and Charlie Day), a pair of plumbers who are embarking on their own business in Brooklyn, much to the skepticism of neighbors, frenemies, and their extended family. When the opportunity arises for them to fix a flooding water main in the city, they dive at it, only to be sucked out of New York City by an inexplicably magical pipe that sends them to the world of the video games. Mario goes to the Mushroom Kingdom, where he meets Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy), the garrulous Toad (Keegan-Michael Key), and other strange creatures. Mario and Peach have to work together to rescue Luigi, who's been captured by forces overseen by the terrifying turtle Bowser (Jack Black), who wishes to rule the kingdom but not on his own.

If there is an attempt to be subversive in "The Super Mario Bros. Movie," it should be apparent in that overall synopsis: this time around, the beautiful princess is no longer the damsel in distress. Instead, the film — directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic of the much funnier Cartoon Network show "Teen Titans Go!", and written by Matthew Fogel — flips the script so that Peach is not only not in distress, but is Mario's true guide and a much more capable and powerful character than she was in the earliest iterations of the video games. That Peach is a character with recognizable agency as opposed to being a modernized take on the princess in need of rescuing from a fairy-tale monster is unquestionably a good thing, but the choice also feels like the most subversive decision of a film from 25 years ago, not from 2023.

Of course, a movie like "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" can only afford to be too subversive. People all over the world know some iteration of these games, whether from the days of the NES or SNES, the "Mario Kart" series, or something you might play on your Wii or Switch. Horvath and Jelenic's wry tendencies from "Teen Titans Go!" do flare up from time to time here, as in a running gag involving an imprisoned character whose nihilism horrifies everyone near them, including the trapped Luigi. And some of the supporting players, such as Key, Black, and Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong, seem to embrace the fun of playing in this bright and poppy world. It's no doubt the case that because these characters are so fiercely protected by the powers that be at Nintendo that the characters don't stray too far from their origins: Mario is heroic, and Bowser is evil, and there's very little interest in adding too many layers of complexity to either of them. (Even Bowser's true plan of domination feels like an old-school villain's take on controlling those around them.)

Where the movie does stray — and this is an unavoidable discussion to have — is in some of the casting. Black does a bit of a baritone riff on his Tenacious D persona as Bowser, and the film is better for it. Rogen is very much doing his shtick as Donkey Kong, even doing his now-very-familiar staccato chuckle at one point, but it ends up working in the character's favor, as Donkey Kong and Mario have something of a love-hate relationship from the start. Chris Pratt, no stranger to the world of voiceover work from "Onward" and "The Lego Movie", is ... not entirely just using his own voice as Mario. But outside of a number of brief gags, including an '80s riff near the start, this Mario mostly sounds like ... well, just a blandly heroic guy. And while Mario has always been the straightforward hero, his look has always made the character feel more distinctive than the voice issuing from him in this new film. (Charlie Day's voice fits better with this film's Luigi, so it's something of a shame that the character is shunted to the side for a while.)

"The Super Mario Bros. Movie" is the latest film from Illumination Entertainment, which has thrived on low-budget animation franchises since its inception. This is the studio of "Despicable Me" and "Sing," so it is no surprise that this film feels destined to break box-office records even as it never remotely attempts to push the creative envelope. Considering the source, it is not surprising how safe this film feels, from the many needle drops to the moments in which the film replicates gameplay while Mario, Peach, and Donkey Kong fend off bad guys or race through an equivalent of the Rainbow Road, to the many aspects of the film's soundtrack that very loudly quote the score from the "Super Mario" video game series. "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" arrives in theaters as promised in every respect: it's all but assured to be the biggest hit of the year, it will offer families something to see in theaters after a long delay, and it is mostly ... just there. This movie exists, and that's about as high as it aspires.

/Film Rating: 4 out of 10