Super Mario Bros. Review

Inherent to video games that make their way to the big screen is a fundamental faith in the plot of said gaming experience. Super Mario Bros. has a thin simplicity that does not benefit the viewer, but it does follow the basic premise and formula of the game. Trying to extract a feature-length film from what is, essentially, a one-sentence storyline, is an uphill struggle. Regardless of character, world-building elements or structure, it all boils down to the fundamental simplicity that gamers can contend with. Simple elements are at the core of these adaptations. It is why the likes of Postal, Max Payne and Hitman: Agent 47 were action-packed, bulky genre strokes. Trying to extrapolate more reason or story is the problem, especially so in Super Mario Bros.

Plumber costumes for Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo that would be better suited to the boiler team Hoskins fronted in Terry Gilliams’ Brazil, there was no hope for Super Mario Bros. Not because Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton make for a janky directing pair, not because Dennis Hopper is caked in scaly makeup, but because the plot of one of the longest-reigning series of video games was far too simple for any form of an addition to be made. It is a fundamental that has steered the series through most of its mainline iterations, and throwing Hoskins and Samantha Mathis into that was going to change nothing whatsoever. These were innocent times, though, and merchandising was an afterthought, rather than a part of the development.

How the fundamentals of this plot are linked together in the opening segment is the true trouble. Nuns taking in the egg of King Koopa (Hopper), some nicely lit shots throwing Mathis through the sewers of Brooklyn, all of it relies on those basics of the game. But that is it. Mario (Hoskins) is a plumber from Brooklyn that saves a princess. Dragging that out into an hour and forty minutes is asking for trouble. Hoskins and Leguizamo do the best they can. Mario Mario, the apparent name of Hoskins’ rendition of this Charles Martinet character, is fundamentally close to what the vocal range of Mario would be in those later, more refined vocal performances. Leguizamo, however, is just playing himself, as he usually does. Usually charming, but not here. Instinct drives Luigi as a freewheeling terror of the roads. There is an equivalent here between Luigi and aspects of Tommy Wiseau’s work on The Room. Those poorly-delivered notes of dialogue are unbearable.

Somehow Fiona Shaw and Lance Henriksen were roped into this too, but their roles are those original notes of clarity that comes under the broader strokes of too many cooks in the kitchen for the script. Still, Super Mario Bros. will get away with the objectively haunted Koopa iterations that are found throughout this feature. They are as disturbing as anything else to come from the 1990s, although there is little worse than this. Objectively one of the most important starts for video game adaptations, but mainly to show future generations how not to do them. Very dull, filled with troubling and dated moments of technical, lacklustre set pieces and some awful character design the whole way through. But that is more than can be expected for a story based on just one sentence.