Now that Hollywood has actually managed to make video game adaptations work (see: The Last Of Us and, arguably, Sonic The Hedgehog?) there is a hell of a lot riding on two moustachioed Italian-American plumbers right now.
The Nintendo mascots – brothers Mario and Luigi, for those who have been living under a Thwomp for the past half-century – are the leads in The Super Mario Bros. (not to be confused with the universally panned Super Mario Bros. film of 1993) which arrives in cinemas today.
The casting is sufficiently A-list, with Chris Pratt as Mario, Charlie Day as Luigi and Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, while producers have called in the comedy reinforcements of Jack Black, Seth Rogen and Fred Armisen (Bowser, Donkey Kong and Cranky Kong, respectively).
As for the plot, the film – directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic – centres on a special Mario mission that divides the two afore-mentioned bros. According to the official synopsis: “A Brooklyn plumber named Mario travels through the Mushroom Kingdom with a princess named Peach and an anthropomorphic mushroom named Toad to find Mario's brother, Luigi, and to save the world from a ruthless fire-breathing Koopa named Bowser.”
The film premiered over the weekend in LA, and the first reactions were mixed. A Rotten Tomatoes critic was all for it, with one caveat: “It is a love letter to the game & lore of everyone's favourite plumber brothers! Easter Eggs galore! Utilises sound & score perfectly! Peach is bada*s! The voice is addressed. Jack Black sings! Fans will flip! Luigi is sidelined [crying emoji].” (Tessa Smith)
It’s a no for Gizmondo: “I really wanted to like it but I did not. A few solid scenes capture the spirit of the game but mostly it's an overly goofy, bare-bones plot, filled w/ bad jokes & worse song choices. It looks great but I was more bored & annoyed than entertained.” (Germain Lussier)
But it won the heart of Fandango, with a special shout out for Jack Black: “Wahoo! 'The Super Mario Bros. Movie' is the ultimate love letter to every era of Mario. Loved the humour & especially Jack Black’s Bowser. I felt the same way watching the movie as I do playing the games. It’s just joyful. Also, stay for the credits!” (Erik Davis)
The critics reactions weren’t quite as forgiving, however.
“This much-trailed, much-hyped new animated feature is tedious and flat in all senses, a disappointment to match the live-action version in 1993. It’s visually bland in ways that reminded me of European knockoff animations and utterly inert in narrative terms, with a baffling lack of properly funny lines.” (Peter Bradshaw)
“The film has an astonishing lack of jokes, twists, memorable lines, exhilarating stunts, touching emotional moments, and anything else that might engage any viewer who isn't playing spot-the-allusion. As slick and corporate as The Super Mario Bros Movie is, it has a first-draft laziness that's rare in big-screen animation.” (Nicholas Barber)
“It is as shallow, sterile and eyeball-drillingly inane a feature-length brand-extension exercise as Hollywood has yet produced. Goodness knows the two recent Sonic the Hedgehog films felt like vacuous cash-ins; Super Mario Bros makes them look like Raiders of the Lost Ark…. Despite some serious competition in recent years, no film has ever made me feel more like I was being frogmarched round a branch of Toys R Us.” (Robbie Collin)
“The Super Mario Bros Movie, an animated rendition of the game courtesy of Illumination (aka the Minion people), is nothing more and nothing less than what you’d expect from a Mario film…The rest may as well have been written by an algorithm.” (Clarisse Loughrey)
“It’s all laser-designed to tickle the nostalgia adenoids of Nintendo nerds. But it ultimately never feels more than just a very high-definition, feature-length video game cutscene – the bit you sit through while waiting to play the actual game.” (John Nugent)
Variety
“Mario presides over a digital playground that lifts the spirit to a place of split-second wonder, and The Super Mario Bros. Movie stays true to that. Its ingenuity is infectious. You don’t have to be a Mario fan to respond to it, but the film is going to remind the millions who are why they call it a joystick.” (Owen Gleiberman)
The Super Mario Bros. hits cinemas on Wednesday 5 April.
