The Super Mario Bros. Movie

Nintendo knows what's great about the 'Super Mario Bros.' games, and perfectly brings them to life on the big screen.

As Nintendo’s first serious attempt at conquering filmmaking, it’s a lovingly crafted entry point with the potential for more.

This lively computer-animated take on the video game just opened and it’s already the biggest box-office smash of 2023. Despite lapses into dull and disposable, it’s also a gift for parents seeking family entertainment for the 5-year-old in all of us. Game on.

For the Mario fan in your household, young or old, it’s likely exactly what they want it to be. However, if you’ve somehow managed to go through life without having any attachment to the character, there is absolutely no reason for you to watch it.

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.

The film feels like it’s content to check off to-do notes and scratch the viewer’s nostalgia itch.

But in going to such great lengths to avoid that film’s grim weirdness, the Super Mario Bros. Movie filmmakers have flattened the concept into benign nothingness. They’ve course corrected into the side of a mountain. There’s no heartbeat here.

I like this movie it is funny entertainment and it also promotes left wing politics

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is exactly what you might expect from a modern Mario adaptation made by Illumination and Nintendo: color, pace, constant references, recognizable worlds, simple humor and the constant feeling of watching a very well-packaged brand. It is not a great film, but it is watchable. And it is certainly much better than that strange 90s version with John Leguizamo, which had its own accidental cult charm, but as a Mario adaptation was pure madness.Here, at least, Mario looks like Mario. The Mushroom Kingdom, Peach, Luigi, Bowser, Donkey Kong, karts, blocks, pipes, power-ups and music are all where they should be. The film understands that a large part of its audience is not looking for a deep reinvention, but for seeing on screen what they have been playing for decades. In that sense, it delivers. It is colorful, fast and respectful of Nintendo’s **** problem is that it also remains very much on the surface. The story is minimal, the characters have little depth and many scenes feel designed more as a succession of references than as real storytelling. At times, it feels less like a film and more like an animated theme park: everything is pretty, everything moves, everything sounds familiar, but there is not always much underneath.Still, it has charm. Bowser is by far the best thing in it. Jack Black gives him an absurd and funny energy, and the song “Peaches” works very well because it understands the exact tone: silly, catchy and ridiculous in the best possible way. That mix of exaggerated villain and pathetic lovesick monster gives the film some of its most memorable **** also helps that the film has the right length. It does not drag, it does not try to overcomplicate things, and it moves from one world to another as if clearing levels. That can be seen as a limitation, but also as a virtue: a Mario movie did not need two and a half hours of mythology. It needed to move, entertain and avoid becoming heavy. And it does that.What it lacks is a little more soul. It has nostalgia, spectacle and visual fidelity, but not much emotion. For children, it can work perfectly, and for adults who grew up with Mario, there is the pleasure of recognition. But beyond that, it is hard to find a truly memorable film. It is fun while it lasts and fairly forgettable once it **** Super Mario Bros. Movie does not jump to the very top of the flagpole, but it clears the level. It is a correct, likable and very carefully designed adaptation for fans and children, with Bowser stealing the show every time he appears. It is not especially inspired animated cinema, but it is effective family entertainment. And compared with the 90s version, this almost feels like a masterpiece of the Mushroom Kingdom.

I’m familiar enough with Mario’s universe to understand its logic, and my experience with the film comes from the clash between what I expected and what I actually got. Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic attempt an ambitious adaptation that mixes elements from many Mario games, creating more of a fast-paced mosaic than a focused story. The plot is simple: rescuing Luigi from Bowser with Peach’s help. My biggest issue is the character balance. Peach dominates the narrative so heavily that it stops feeling like a story about two brothers. Luigi is reduced to a passive role, and Mario himself sometimes feels secondary. Emotionally, the film leaves me cold. Its themes of self-improvement and recognition are overly familiar and executed without impact. Visually, though, it’s excellent: colorful, energetic, and constantly entertaining. I enjoyed its style and pace, but despite being effective, it never felt meaningful or memorable to me.

They Didn’t Make a Mario Movie. They Made a Mario **** me be clear about something before I get into this: I grew up on Mario. Not casually. I mean sitting on the floor at 7am with the cartridge tilted just right, learning the exact pixel you had to stand on to get the secret item. Mario was mine in a way that felt personal and specific. So I’m not coming into this as a hater. I’m coming in as someone who actually cared — which is exactly why this movie stung the way it did.Because what Nintendo and Illumination made wasn’t a film. It was a delivery system for **** movie doesn’t trust you to feel anything — it just trusts you to remember.Every five minutes, something happens on screen that isn’t a story beat, it’s a trigger. The music cues. The visual callback. The easter egg. The “oh I remember that” moment engineered into the edit like a Pavlovian response test. And audiences clapped. Which, fine. But clapping at a reference isn’t the same as being moved by a story. These are completely different experiences, and the film never once seems to understand **** whole thing runs on nostalgia like a car runs on gas. And when you’re burning that fuel constantly, you never stop to ask: where are we actually going?Mario is a side character in his own movie.This one genuinely bothers me. Chris Pratt’s Mario is likable the way a company mascot is likable — pleasant, inoffensive, totally without depth. He doesn’t make decisions that cost him anything. He doesn’t change. He’s carried forward by the plot rather than driving it. The emotional core of the story — if you can call it that — belongs to the visuals and the set pieces, not to him.Meanwhile Bowser, voiced by Jack Black with obvious commitment and genuine energy, ends up being the most dimensional character in the film almost by accident. He has a want. He has a bit. He has a song. And the movie barely knows what to do with that. You’ve got a villain with more personality than your protagonist and a script that doesn’t **** pacing is relentless in a way that feels defensive.Like the filmmakers were scared that if they let a scene breathe for 30 seconds, you’d check your phone. So instead of breathing, it accelerates. Constantly. There’s always a new environment, a new obstacle, a new piece of IP to acknowledge. It’s not storytelling — it’s stimulation management. And it works on a surface level, the way a loud room keeps you from falling asleep. But exhausting someone into engagement isn’t the same as compelling them.I didn’t feel excited watching it. I felt **** dialogue exists to move bodies from point A to point B.Nobody in this movie says anything worth remembering. Nobody has a conversation that reveals character. The emotional moments are told to you — “this matters, feel this now” — rather than earned. When the film reaches for genuine sentiment it’s borrowing it wholesale from the iconography of the games rather than building anything new. The emotion you feel watching it isn’t coming from the film. It’s coming from you, your own history, your own attachment. The movie is just pointing at that and taking credit for it.That’s a con. A slick, expensive, extremely well-marketed **** games had more soul because they left room for your imagination.Here’s what I keep coming back to. Super Mario 64, Super Mario World, even the original NES game — those games were sparse by design and alive by experience. The world felt big because you were moving through it. The stakes felt real because you were the one losing the lives. Mario worked as a character because you projected yourself onto him — the silence, the openness, the possibility. He was a **** movie turns that canvas into a billboard.This is what it looks like when a beloved thing gets industrialized.Someone in a room — probably many someones in many rooms — made decisions based on data about what Mario fans respond to, what ages the movie needs to hit, what the Chinese market requires, what the theme park synergy should look like. And the result is technically correct in every measurable way. It’s colorful and loud and it has all the pieces. But it has no center. No original thought. No risk taken anywhere in its 92 minutes that wasn’t pre-approved by focus ****’s not a bad movie the way a genuinely strange failed movie is bad. It’s bad the way corporate product is bad — smooth, confident, emptied out.I didn’t leave that theater feeling like a kid again.I left feeling like a demographic.

Der Film ist im Grunde eine bunte Achterbahnfahrt voller Easter Eggs, die kaum Zeit zum Atmen oder für eine echte Charakterentwicklung lässt. Hauptsächlich Fanservice ohne richtige Story oder Tiefgang. Und die flache und amateurhafte deutsche Stimme von Peach gibt dem Film den Rest. Influencer bzw. Influencerinnen machen das einfach nur kaputt. Es passt einfach nicht rein. Für das Marketing wird ein hoher Preis gezahlt. Der Film ist kaum sehenswert und kann ohne Bedenken ignoriert werden. Wirklich schade, da so viel Potenzial liegen gelassen wurde. Für ein typisches Nintendo Spiel mag das vielleicht reichen, aber nicht für einen Kinofilm. Für einfache Nintendofans mag er wohl ausreichend blenden, wie man an der Publikumsresonanz erkennt. Ich bin da nicht so leicht so haben.