I’m going to be completely honest here, like I was with the last one – I’m biased to loving Super Mario Bros., I’ve played most of the games over the forty years it’s been around, and before, as I played Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. games before they were Super. I loved the first movie for having an enjoyable story and narrative to a property that’s mostly built on experiencing it through play. More than most other games, Shigeru Miyamoto‘s creations seemed hard to translate to the movies, as we saw with the 1993 film. Even though I loved the US cartoons and the many manga series over the years, the explosion of joy I had seeing Mario, Luigi, Toad, Peach, and Donkey Kong in the first film run through courses, get power-ups, and race karts to face the King of the Koopas, Bowser, was a delight.
Three years later, Illumination and Nintendo are back with the grander Super Mario Galaxy Movie, pulling its title from the 2007 Nintendo Wii game. Now with Mario and Luigi being seen as the Super Mario Bros. in the Mushroom Kingdom and beyond, the two celebrate with Princess Peach and Toad with the kingdom as it’s Peach’s birthday. With Peach still thinking about her origins from before she got to the Mushroom Kingdom, all that is stopped once a falling star crashes close to Peach’s castle. A small child star asks Peach for help saving its mother, Princess Rosalina, protector of the Cosmos, who’s been captured by Bowser Jr., whose goal is to save his father, Bowser, and then, with their Bowser Planet, destroy the universe.
Peach agrees and takes Toad, leaving the Mario Bros. in charge with their new friend, the dinosaur Yoshi. They take care of the Mushroom Kingdom right until Bowser Jr. appears to get his father back. From there, an even bigger adventure begins throughout the galaxy with more easter eggs and cameos from the Mario and Nintendo universe to count. The movie even made Fox McCloud from Star Fox make sense. Fox plays the role that DK did in the last movie. While not connected to Mario like DK was with this story being set in space, having a space hero works even if it doesn’t make much sense other than reintroducing him and his world back to audiences. Glen Powell is pretty perfect here as McCloud. I was glad it was more than a cameo, and he actually contributed to the story well.
I know a ton of critics hated the first movie, as it still has a rotten tomato score and a pretty poor Metacritic score. I don’t get it, and I feel most aren’t being fair to that movie, and I feel especially after leaving this one that much of the same will happen here. I think the story is simple and something that can work with most audiences and around the world. It also feels true to what it’s adapting. While I guess seeing Mario and Luigi change costumes through power-ups and seeing animations of moves that might be from a certain game from decades ago might be tiring somehow to some folks, I love the care Illumination does at continuing to translate all these little things into a story that feels right for Mario and the whole gang.
The voice performances are quite good, with Jack Black continuing to steal the show as Bowser, in little or regular-sized form. Anya Taylor-Joy is still great as Peach, getting to add a lot to the character who, most of the time, is being rescued. I do like how the film takes great care to make Princess Peach into a hero equal to Mario, and it’s something I feel Illumination does better than Nintendo has over the years, even after getting a pretty fun game not too long ago. She has some of my favorite scenes with Toad, and finally seeing bad guys from Super Mario Bros. 2, aka Doki Doki Panic, was a beautiful set piece full of colors and great animations as she and Toad faced off against the foes in a casino world.
Keegan Michael Key‘s Toad gets to do a little more here with some good sarcastic jokes, and his jealousy of Yoshi instantly getting added to the group is funny, especially with how good Donald Glover does as Yoshi, with him feeling like it’s just the same voice as we’re used to, mostly. It was very rare when I could kinda tell when listening. I liked how the animators created Yoshi in this with his coloring and texture feeling a bit more realized and tactile than what we’re used to. I loved how they just folded him in without much exposition. It felt honest to the history of the character.
Brie Larson made Rosalina cool for me. While I’ve always liked the look of the character, it just felt, oh, here we have another Princess for Mario to save. Her having a bit more agency than just being home base or explaining things for Mario was nice. While her being a damsel in distress can feel like a step backward, having her be the focus for Peach to save, I feel, brings some of that Frozen energy to the movie. All the Lumas, the star-like beings Rosalina cares for, being this big group of excited kids who want to meet all these heroes, is fun. They bring good, contagious energy to the movie, and I feel they work well as kid audience avatars in the movie.
While others have issues with Chris Pratt as Mario, I never really did, and I still don’t. He’s still fine – he’s no Captain Lou Albano, but there can only be one GOAT Mario voice in this world. Charlie Day has so much fun as Luigi and gets to do a lot more with the castmates in this movie than in the last. He might be a perfect Luigi. The real surprise, though, is Benny Safdie as Bowser Jr., man, he was great as that annoying evil dragon turtle child. He brought the right energy to the character. So dedicated to freeing his father, this version is less of an annoying nuisance and feels more like an actual child, so very focused on living up to his father and wanting to make him proud. I really liked how the translated Bowser Jr. in this might make me rethink how I feel about him.
The film is more than easter eggs, though. The environments are beautiful and full of wonderful colors in each and every scene. While they are making things some of us have seen before, it all looks so full of life and things popping up. The whole universe feels alive and rich. Luscious skies and so many textures from plants, seas, water animals, and skin textures. From bubbles to fires and ice to clouds, it just keeps throwing things at you, and it all looks so good. The screen is so full that it was a joy for me to look at, as I was constantly looking all around to just take everything in. It also scales well with huge space vistas and huge ships, along with big environments that the characters have to run and jump through the whole movie.
I loved this movie, it does all of what I expected from another Mario Bros. movie. It hit all the expectations and brought in all the characters and stuff from the different games as I had hoped. For me, at this time of seeing all these superhero comics and video game adaptations, while also being a film critic, I look for times when I can get that just pure fan enjoyment back. I don’t get that most of the time I end up seeing where they made changes that, for me, make the things worse, even if I can respect the work and craft that went into it. What Illumination and Nintendo do here is just make a pure love letter to what Super Mario is, which works alongside experiencing the games. They feed into each other in a fun way. That’s what I like for adaptations to do: bring up that love of the original thing and make me go back to it. For me, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is my most enjoyable movie theater experience of the year already.
I look forward to jumping back into The Super Mario Galaxy Movie as soon as I can.
Rating: A
Level of Enthusiasm: 100%
