The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)

After brothers Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) are separated and Luigi’s life is threatened by the menacing Bowser (Jack Black), Mario must team up with new friends in order to save his brother and the world. With the help of Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy), Toad (Keegan Michael-Key), and Donkey Kong (Seth Rogen), the small-time plumber will face his biggest test ever. The Super Mario Bros. Movie is thirty-five years in the making, incorporating pieces from every Mario-related game since his inception.

If you’re going to walk away from The Super Mario Bros. Movie with even the slightest bit of positivity, it has to be in regard to the animation. This has been a year for tremendous animation of great variety–and what The Super Mario Bros. Movie showcases is simply brilliant. If you’ve ever played a Mario-related game, you will understand just how immersive this film is, how it transports viewers of all ages to a place that they never believed to be possible. Interestingly enough, The Super Mario Bros. Movie doesn’t need to be perfect in this way–it simply outdoes itself and invites viewers into this animated world, refusing to let them go, and enticing them every step of the way. If the animation was any indication of how incredible the rest of the film would be, I was sure that this was going to be one of the best films of 2023…holy cow was I wrong.

The animation is the only entertaining aspect of the film (other than realizing that Day was the voice of Luigi–but that delight quickly dwindled). Once the allure of the animation wore off–and it did wear off thanks to the frustration of the rest of the film–I was done with the Super Mario Bros. Movie. Nearly every other aspect of the film is infuriating and boring.

To be honest, this was the closest that I’ve ever come to walking out of a movie theater because of how bored I was. I felt like I was wasting my time, that doing anything else with the two hours that I sat there would have been more productive and enjoyable. Yet, I decided that this would be the day that I tortured myself almost to tears. The Super Mario Bros. Movie is undoubtedly one of the most poorly written films that I’ve ever seen. It seems like Writer Matthew Fogel couldn’t have cared less about developing a cohesive and entertaining story, and that he was focused on one thing and one thing only: nostalgia. Nostalgia doesn’t make a film good; what it does do is trick viewers into thinking the film is good. It plays with their emotions and attempts to take them back to a time when life was simpler, when they had this tremendous video game in the palm of their hands, when things were seemingly better. Fogel is effective in tricking a massive number of Mario fans into thinking that his script is actually good, because I’ve heard nothing but praise for The Super Mario Bros. Movie (that was up until five minutes before the film started). I’m not one of those people, I refuse to believe that this film is even remotely entertaining just because of its nostalgic value. It’s ultimately a chaotic mess that never develops into anything of value.

From Mario, to Donkey Kong, to Toad, not a single character develops throughout the course of the film (with the exception of Luigi who makes a drastic, unwarranted change in character in the closing minutes). Thirty minutes into the film I was tired of the characters, their dreams, their stories–I stopped caring. Fogel and Directors Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic, Pierre Leduc, and Fabien Polack do nothing to develop the characters, to give them compelling arcs, or to keep them interesting. The characters fail to entertain just like the film as a whole.

This is one of the most frustrating experiences that I’ve ever had in a movie theater. I was bored out of my mind, unable to comprehend why viewers believed that anything beyond the nostalgia and the animation was entertaining. Again and again I heard how magnificent The Super Mario Bros. Movie was, how it was one of the better video game-inspired films, how I was, without a doubt, going to love it. Fogel, Horvath, and their cronies effectively trick their viewers into thinking that this is a good film, frustrating me even further. The animation is brilliant, but the story, the characters, the dialogue, the attempted comedy, and more fail to entertain in any way. Given the post-credit scene, I know a sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie is inevitable; so, I’m wasting my time here, but please don’t make another one of these films–I’ll sadly be forced to watch it, and I have better things to do.

Directed by Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic, Pierre Leduc, & Fabien Polack.

Written by Matthew Fogel.

Starring Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key, Seth Rogen, Khary Payton, etc.

⭐⭐⭐⭐½/10