Super Mario Bros.
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Movie Reviews of Super Mario Bros.
Movie Review: Long Live Mario Brothers
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this for a friend. She really liked it. I like her. Everything's just fine.Movie Review: mario bros dvd
Summary: 5 Stars
awesome old skool flick. loved it. bought it for my boyfriend and he was so excitedMovie Review: Super Mario Bro
Summary: 5 Stars
I was very pleased with the dvd it was in great shape and got here very quickly.Movie Review: A completely misunderstood movie. Here's why it is good.
Summary: 4 Stars
Most people tend to hate this film. I think, though, that they hate it because they're looking at it the wrong way. It's one of those movies that has a point, and if you miss that, you don't get any of it.Their mistake is to watch this expecting a Mario movie. I know, it sounds like the right thing to expect, but hear me out. Fans of the game know what Mario is all about - powerups, angry mushrooms, winged turtles and flying blocks. If you watch this movie expecting that, you'll be disappointed, as you'll find NONE of it. But that's not to say it isn't worth watching.
Picture the scene: a couple of directors are asked to make a Mario movie by Nintendo, and they want it to be live action. That was the flavour at the time - take cartoon characters and make them real. Now, these directors know about Mario. They say "No way can that be done. Mario is all about being a cartoon. Jumping on little angry animals, everyone's a mushroom... It's a great game, and it'd make a good cartoon, but a live action version would just be moronic." "Oh, don't worry about that," says Nintendo, "just so long as you get the main elements in, do it how you want."
The directors go away, rubbing their chins, trying to think of a way to do that but still do justice to the games. And then they have a fascinating idea.
What if they don't do a Mario film, exactly. What if they do a sci-fi film, but fill it to the brim with Mario references, for the keen-eyed game fans?
That's what this movie is. If you watch it with that in mind, you will enjoy it. I've tested this theory out already on a friend who thought the film was a bit stupid when he saw it as a kid, but watched it yesterday with my little thesis in mind and he loved it.
What you get here is a quite serious (despite the light-hearted script) sci-fi flick about the nightmarish world ours may soon become: crowded, filthy, choked with pollution and overrun with a hate-filled populace who will fight you, yell at you, even try to shoot you if you pass too close. Run by a demonic well-dressed dictator politician (played to amazing effect by Dennis Hopper) who has let this world become the dark horror it is through neglect: there is no water any more, only sludge, and a slimy infestation of fungus has grown over everything, draped in great loops like one gigantic, chaotic spider web. Into this world come Mario and Luigi, similar to their game counterparts but more human, a pair of plumber brothers from Brooklyn who grew up together as orphans. They are trying to save a girl, who has been kidnapped and dragged here, and along the way they get wrapped up in something really horrifying: the president and his people are human, but human descended from dinosaurs instead of apes. He's found a way to revert his citizens back to their prehistoric roots, and with his army of lizard lackeys he's going to bridge the split between worlds (that formed when the meteorite that "killed" the dinosaurs hit) and take over our own.
And through all this we find references of the sort that Mario's biggest fans will drool over, so long as they are watching this in the way I suggest. These prove that the film has been put together not by someone ignorant of the games, but by someone very well versed in their lore. A large woman called Big Bertha, dressed all in red, is named in reference to a large red fish enemy from Mario 3. She wears mechanical boots named "Thwomp-Stompers", after the classic ice block enemies, and they are powered by capsules that look exactly like Bullet Bills, from Super Mario Bros 1. Shops are apparently owned by people with the same names as characters from the games (Hammer Bros and Bullet Bill), a protest singer is named after Toad, the happy little mushroom from the games, but his hair is shaved into the pattern on the shell of Lakitu, a fan favourite since day one. These references go on throughout the film and shape its world - the fungus, which turns out to be a conscious entity, helps the brothers in every way it can; they are saved on more than one occasion by mushrooms, in what has become a literal mushroom kingdom.
It's all in here if you keep your eyes peeled. Go in ready to watch not a Mario film, but a film that references Mario, and you will love it. It doesn't "change" anything from the games, because it is not any kind of filmed version of them, but it nods to them constantly.
Viewed in this light, it is a treat to watch, and a rare treat, because no other film has ever crammed in so many references to videogaming before. Simply put, a live action Mario film could never be made, and the directors asked to make one did a brilliant job at trying something new and original. Well worth the ten dollars for the DVD.
Movie Review: Goofy, but in a good way
Summary: 4 Stars
Super Mario Bros. / B00008979N
*Spoilers*
I watched this movie as a child and remember liking the movie, but being a touch confused. The Super Mario Brothers games that I played had involved a plumber, traveling through pipes, jumping to incredible heights, and rescuing a princess (perpetually in another castle!) in a crown and a dress. In order to make the concept work as a movie, however, the filmmakers understandably had to change up the plot a tad.
In retrospect, this really is not such a bad movie, and it holds up fairly well for the time period. Hoskins is wonderful, as always, reprising much of his role from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, here as the grumpy, world-weary, heart-of-gold Mario. The actors for Luigi and Princess Daisy are less well-rounded and much of their parts come off as somewhat cheesy, but since their characters are supposed to be wide-eyed romantics, the cheese is not too painful.
The basic overlay of the plot is that our world and the Mushroom Kingdom world are two dimensions, separated by a divergence in the far past in which one world evolved with primates as the dominant life-form and the other world evolved with reptiles as the dominant life-forms. (It is particularly fascinating to see this movie treat evolution as a bland fact that even children can understand, when today the issue is considered to be so extremely controversial as to be potentially off-putting to some audiences.) When the reptilian world suffers a military coup, the infant Princess Daisy is smuggled out to the human world for her own safety. Years later, the grown-up Daisy is sucked back into her home world - along with two hapless plumbers. In this world something akin to Blade Runner or Total Recall, the plumbers must move quickly in order to save Princess Daisy, defeat the evil King Koopa, and restore the rightful king to the throne.
If the plot sounds corny, that's because it is, but it is intentionally corny, going along with the craziness and enjoying it along the way. The viewer is sucked in by the sheer craziness of the whole thing, and Hoskins is a superb element, having mastered the art of treating the absurd as unavoidable fact, while still humorously seething along the way at being made ridiculous. In this way - as a celebration of the ridiculous - the movie can still hold its own today in ways that more true-to-source video games of the era cannot. This is a decent movie if you are looking for a trip down memory lane, for decent home-style MST3K riffing, or for young children who will enjoy the bright colors and loud noises along the way.
~ Ana Mardoll