Super Mario Movie

Nintendo's iconic Italian plumber hero has already inspired one flop movie – and this sluggish new animation is no better. In fact, it might be worse, ...

As slick and corporate as The Super Mario Bros Movie is, it has a first-draft laziness that's rare in big-screen animation. The Super Mario Bros. But poor Luigi is captured by the monstrous Bowser (Jack Black), who has a name which suggests that he's a dog, and a physique which suggests that he's a dragon, but who is actually the leader of a race of turtles called Koopas. For instance, a flashback shows us that Princess Peach is a human who wandered into the Mushroom Kingdom from another planet – maybe even the same planet as Mario. The trouble starts when Mario is suddenly surrounded by floating bricks, giant gold coins, "Power Up" cubes, and burbling electronic sound effects, which only make sense in the context of a video game. Mario and Peach are supposed to be rushing to defend her realm from Bowser's invading army, but these pointless sequences remind us that no one is in any hurry to get anywhere. What's worse is that the film doesn't just have quick references to these games, it has long sequences lifted from them. As long as you don't worry about it, and embrace the psychedelic randomness, you can accept it as silly, what's-not-to-like science-fiction. Mario (Chris Pratt, who, as well as starring in Guardians of The Galaxy and Jurassic World, voiced the hero in The Lego Movie) and his nervous younger brother Luigi (Charlie Day) are established as good-hearted, bushy-moustached young guys who are trying to build their own independent plumbing business. Unfortunately, The Super Mario Bros Movie is not one of those films. By a remarkable coincidence, the brothers arrive on this surreal planet (or, possibly, in this surreal universe) just after Bowser has just got hold of a glowing star which will enable him to conquer Mushroom Kingdom. True, 1993's Super Mario Bros, with Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo, was a notorious flop, but The Lego Movie was tied to a line of plastic construction sets, and that was wonderful.

So what exactly is the story? Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) are going about setting up a plumbing business in Brooklyn, New York, but the going is ...

We imagine that future sequels (which seem near-certain) will be given the chance to sit with their characters for a little, thus removing the need to sideline some for the benefit of others. This clear love for the source material carries through into Brian Tyler's superb score — undoubtedly the star of the show (which is saying something when you consider the fact that there is a literal star in this one). The Mario movie is safe, sometimes to its detriment, but this means that you are never going to be left scratching your head just because you don't know the intricacies of Nintendo's history. Directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic have ensured that the Mushroom Kingdom is absolutely jam-packed full of references to just about every Mario game available, and Illumination's signature squishy animation does a good job of presenting all of this in a colourful, pleasing way. Starting with the obvious, this film is a dream for anyone who has ever wanted to see the world of Mario brought to life with higher fidelity. Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) are going about setting up a plumbing business in Brooklyn, New York, but the going is tough.

Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Seth Rogen are among the voices in the Nintendo game adaptation.

Maybe the biggest sin of The Super Mario Bros. The Super Mario Bros. It’s used to great effect in moments sprinkled throughout the film that are so good and inspiring, they almost make the rest of the film worth it. Because the characters, with the exception of Mario, are one-note without a meaningful arc. But the disconnect between the music and the story ruins any chance of that happening. And so, with the help of Donkey Kong (Seth Rogen) and others, Mario, Peach, and the gang show down with Bowser to save Luigi and the Mushroom Kingdom. The film is a collaboration between Nintendo and Illumination, the company behind Despicable Me, Sing, and The Secret Life of Pets. [has a glistening box office record](https://gizmodo.com/minions-rise-of-gru-box-office-illumination-1849139049), but not quite the critical acclaim of some of its animation contemporaries. [that looks and feels like the games](https://gizmodo.com/the-super-mario-bros-movie-was-a-damp-fungal-love-let-1845103346) it’s based on, it took all of 40 seconds to realize it’s going to be a mess. The film begins with Bowser, the King of All Koopas, arriving with his followers to take over a [kingdom of penguins](https://gizmodo.com/super-mario-movie-poster-trailer-release-date-1849613799). It pretends like it is, occasionally throwing a nostalgic wink into the set decoration, but the bulk of the movie is disarmingly straightforward, with characters who barely learn anything, and stakes that never elicit even a hint of emotion. It’s just lots of bright colors with characters entering and exiting the movie like they’re running across a game screen.

Starring Chris Pratt, Charlie Day & Jack Black, 'The Super Mario Bros. Movie' brings Nintendo's iconic characters to the movies in a satisfying way.

The Super Mario Bros. Obviously, The Super Mario Bros. In many ways, The Super Mario Bros. From the very beginning, The Super Mario Bros. It’s also impressive how much The Super Mario Bros. For 100-minutes straight, I had a smile on my face throughout The Super Mario Bros. With the help of a bold Toad ( [Keegan-Michael Key](https://collider.com/tag/keegan-michael-key/)), Mario meets Peach, who is readying to fight back against Bowser, as Mario attempts to find his brother, who has become caught in Bowser’s grasp. If 1993’s Super Mario Bros. was a strange envisioning of what this video game world would look like, [The Super Mario Bros. But instead, Mario and Luigi end up in the Mushroom Kingdom, separated from each other during a dangerous time for the strange land. Movie](https://collider.com/tag/super-mario-bros-movie/) is the exact opposite: a colorful adventure brimming with references, a joyous celebration of this franchise’s history and the history of early Nintendo, and one of the best kids films in recent years. While the

In Theaters. April 5, 2023 · Cast. Chris Pratt as Mario; Charlie Day as Luigi; Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach; Jack Black as Bowser; Keegan-Michael Key as ...

The cages are lowered and begin to melt, but the prisoners are saved. We also see the mushrooms give Mario special Cat and Racoon suits to battle with. (Yeah, I’m old enough to remember that truly horrible live-action Mario pic from the ‘90s.) Mario and Luigi’s former boss, Spike, calls the brothers “stupid” for leaving his employ. Luigi and Princess Peach all fight to protect the residents of the Mushroom Kingdom. Problem is, once Mario and Luigi get to the source of the city’s emergency, they end up being washed into the wrong place and down the wrong pipe. And then Mario spots a newscast on TV and sits up with a flush of excitement. And the mushroomy toad residents there raised her and then made her their princess. But Mario resolutely declares, “Nothing can hurt us as long as we’re together!” And indeed, the Bros. Bowser also decides to sacrifice a large group of prisoners by lowering their cages into a lake of lava. And they’re willing to give their all to protect one another. A huge water main has cracked open downtown, and the city is having a tough time stopping the flood.

"Super Mario Bros. Movie" brings back Nintendo's most beloved characters, from Mario and Luigi to Toad and the Kongs for a nostalgia-packed adventure.

“The Super Mario Bros.” is family-friendly movie theater catnip over the Easter weekend, and it’s sure to be an enjoyable watch for the average viewer. In “The Super Mario Bros. Much credit goes to the cast for having so much fun with their characters; Charlie Day, for one, manages to infuse as much Charlie Day into Luigi as he does in any live action role. There are also plenty of Easter eggs to be enjoyed by gameplayers as well as humor that can be appreciated by adults — look out for a cute but misery-inducing Lumalee — and kids alike. This mission has them journeying over to the Jungle Kingdom to ask Cranky Kong (Fred Armisen) for his army. [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]). ['Tetris' is a famously addictive game. [Lots of movies were shot in Arizona, but these are the 5 best. With a soundtrack of ‘80s hits and a score that incorporates the games’ iconic sound effects and songs, the animated film infuses old with new. ['Air' tells the story of how Michael Jordan became a Nike brand. A star-studded voice cast breathes life into a gang of beloved 40-year-old Nintendo characters in the film, in theaters beginning April 5. They don’t even have their family’s respect.

April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.

And “The Super Mario Bros. That’s because as nice as it is to look at “The Super Mario Bros. “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” a Universal Pictures release, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association for action and mild violence. But it is an hour and a half’s worth of superlative marketing that will whet your appetite for more Mario back home on the couch. [“The Super Mario Bros. There Mario (Chris Pratt, passable despite the outcry) and Luigi (Charlie Day) are struggling to get their plumbing business off the ground. If part of the appeal of playing “Super Mario Bros.” and its many offshoots has always been to be immersed in such a sunny imaginary world — plus the bouncy earworm compositions of composer Koji Kondo — the movie has successfully mirrored that mushroom-stomping pleasure. Directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic and their animators have rendered the Mario universe with cartoony splendor, matching the game’s ingenious simplicity with a more robust and equally delightful day-glo palate. That there is a swell of enthusiasm for a Mario Bros. With Sonic the Hedgehog already two movies in, Mario is playing catch up. Hoskins called the experience “a f——— nightmare.”

April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. But it is also, ...

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is finally here. Here's when and where you can watch the animated adventure.

The Super Mario Bros. The Angry Birds Movie (2016): Another animated film with the words "the" and "movie" in the title, The Angry Birds Movie is based on arguably the biggest mobile game of all time. With an intellectual property with such widespread international appeal, it makes perfect sense that The Super Mario Bros. We also get a first look at Princess Peach ( [Anya Taylor-Joy](https://collider.com/tag/anya-taylor-joy/)), who appears to be a much more active part of Mario's adventure and won't be locked up in another castle for most of the runtime. [Chris Pratt](https://collider.com/tag/chris-pratt/) and [Jack Black](https://collider.com/tag/jack-black/). Mario, Luigi, and more will be driving their karts onto the big screen when The Super Mario Bros. Movie was released during a Nintendo Direct special, being introduced by two of the film's biggest stars, We can tell you exactly how to watch The Super Mario Bros. Movie is looking to bring a true-blue representation of the Mushroom Kingdom with a PG rating and a star-studded voice cast, including Chris Pratt and Anya Taylor-Joy as Mario and Princess Peach, with Jack Black turning in villain duties as Bowser. The film was initially scheduled for December 21st, 2022, but was delayed until April. (1993)](https://collider.com/super-mario-bros-movie-is-good/), starring Bob Hoskins and [John Leguizamo](https://collider.com/tag/john-leguizamo/) as Mario and Luigi (neither of which are Italian), didn't come even close to delivering the iconic style and tone of the original games, instead opting for a flashy dinosaur-themed sci-fi box office bomb. [The Super Mario Bros.](https://collider.com/tag/super-mario-bros/) series, which is easily one of the most, if not the most, well-known and beloved video game franchises of all time.

The new animated Mario film looks like the start of a movie series, but does it hold any secret teases after the credits?

But that's not all The Super Mario Bros Movie has in store after the credits roll. Does The Super Mario Bros Movie follow that trend, or is it safe to exit the theater and never look back once the credits begin? What else they might want to incorporate from the Mario games is anybody's guess--there are a lot of Mario games to draw from--but at least we'll have Yoshi. In this post-credits scene, we see the camera delve back down into that mysterious sewer situation (now kinda wrecked after the battle with Bowser) that led Mario and Luigi into the universe of the Mushroom Kingdom, taking us deeper than we'd gone before. But it means that The Super Mario Bros Movie isn't just telling its own story--it's also setting up potential future ones. It took a few decades, but we finally have our second big-screen adaptation of the Super Mario Bros franchise.

Super Mario and his brother Luigi are “the most iconic and beloved characters in the gaming universe,” in the words of Chris Meledandri, founder and head of the ...

The Super Mario Bros. Movie willfully avoids anything creative or ambitious. Mario and Luigi deserve so much better.

That means we’ll get a sequel, and I expect another cycle of the debate of “critics vs. With the nostalgia craze merging with the power of Nintendo and Illumination, “The Super Mario Bros. I suspect we will get a ton of films from the NES universe, including “Donkey Kong Country” and “The Legend of Zelda” (and let’s not forget “Kid Icarus”). I enjoyed the choices made by the team in the structure of Donkey Kong Country, and the Rainbow Road “Super Mario Kart” sequence is well-directed. It is “The [Chris Farley](/cast-and-crew/chris-farley) Show” of family entertainment, mistaking making references to something that was “awesome” for actually making a movie. Or a version that unpacks like “The LEGO Movie” that's more sharply aware of its references and world-building—something that even incorporates the player like that movie does in the end. Fans of this movie will shout from the rooftops that the scripting for something called “The Super Mario Bros. Although Luigi lands in the pipeline that drops him immediately in the dark lands and makes him Bowser's prisoner—a dumb decision that sidelines him for an hour—Mario meets Princess Peach, who introduces him to power-ups. And so all the question-mark cubes get a chance to shine as Mario grows, shrinks, and even turns into a raccoon. Some Nintendo easter eggs in the background of these initial scenes should produce a small smile from people of my generation, and there's a bit of inspiration structurally, like a clever early shot in which Mario and Luigi race through the city in a side-scrolling manner that mimics the earlier games. [Bob Hoskins](/cast-and-crew/bob-hoskins) and [John Leguizamo](/cast-and-crew/john-leguizamo), but the new “The Super Mario Bros. Mario has come a long way since the notoriously awful 1993 version of his adventure starring

Video-game-inspired adventure is a colorful, creative story with more twists and turns than the plumbing under your sink.

(You know, the people you spend time with when you’re not playing video games.) Meanwhile, co-directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic keep the waterways flowing, infusing the narrative with a host of colorful characters — including a thingamabob called a Lumalee (Juliet Jelenic, the director’s daughter) who says things like, “There is no sunshine — only darkness,” in the most adorably nihilistic little squeak of a voice. While the pretty production design will, overall, almost certainly appeal to children, the apocalyptic Dark Lands may be too intense, with scenes of fiery destruction that earn the film’s PG rating. As they try to repair a massive water main break, the brothers descend into a cavernous sewer system that spits them out into two rival underworlds: Mario in the vibrant Mushroom Kingdom, a place with clear echoes of “Alice in Wonderland,” where he meets Toad (Keegan-Michael Key), a talking, humanoid fungus. As in the original game, Mario (voice of Chris Pratt) and his dimwitted brother, Luigi (Charlie Day), are plumbers, here struggling to jump-start their new business in Brooklyn. Luigi, unfortunately, gets sucked into the Dark Lands, ruled by the evil Bowser (Jack Black), who has the power to destroy the kaleidoscopic Mushroom Kingdom.

A famed video game character side-scrolls once again to the big screen in this bland, witless and flagrantly pandering animated comedy.

Every level of the original Super Mario Bros. This is Mario in the Marvel mold: every line a punchline, every gag an arcane meta reference for the nerds who can’t get enough of that sort of thing. Illumination and Universal’s “The Super Mario Bros. Even Mario (a grating, unctuous Chris Pratt), who doesn’t sound like the Mario of the games, still manages to invoke trademark catchphrases like “it’s a-me” and “let’s a-go.” But while the details are meticulous, the attitude is all wrong, trading the simple, unaffected charm that has served the character so well since his introduction in 1981 for a snarky and fatuous air that leans hard on winking humor and bland, hackneyed irony. Fireflowers, super stars and

From the retro ringtone to the map from Super Mario World, here are all of the hidden details and easter eggs in The Super Mario Bros Movie. Let's a-go!

Thankfully it still works, and after that big brute departs the phone rings out with a ringtone familiar to those of us who (or, in my case, whose brother) were purveyors of cuboid underdogs in the early-2000s console war. There's sort of a plot, if you squint — [Mario](https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/mario-games-switch) and Luigi are plucked from Brooklyn to save the Mushroom Kingdom, etcetera — but the script largely serves as a mechanism to move us from one familiar object to the next. Here, then, a list of all the best easter eggs spotted in The Super Mario Bros. Luigi and Mario, plucky so the brothers are, get into a fight with a sports shade-wearing giga-chad, in the process of which Luigi's not-an-iPhone is smashed on the ground. Frankenstein-ing your mum's favourite Minions into existence) isn't a movie so much as a guided tour of [Nintendo](https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/best-nintendo-switch-games)'s greatest hits of the past 30-plus years. [This Mario Kart-inspired TAG Heuer watch is the collab of 2022](/watches/article/mario-kart-tag-heuer-watch-2022)

A post-credits scene in 'The Super Mario Bros. Movie' hints at a potential sequel with a fan-favorite character.

Some think it's 'sheer animated fun.' Others say it's 'bland.' Here's a sampling of reviews of 'The Super Mario Bros. Movie' starring Chris Pratt.

“At its 8-bit heart, “The Super Mario Bros. ... The Super Mario Bros. “Illumination’s animated adventure The Super Mario Bros. “The Super Mario Bros. He’s simply fine — not so bad as to be distracting, but not strong enough to be at all interesting either, which is about the same as The Super Mario Bros. “The artistry is enough to keep children and adults watching. (If you got that reference, you’ll probably like this movie more than the average viewer.)” “As nice as it is to look at ‘The Super Mario Bros. “This is Mario in the Marvel mold: every line a punchline, every gag an arcane meta reference for the nerds who can’t get enough of that sort of thing. Pratt, it should be said, is perfectly capable of the sort of outsized performance Mario needed, having previously turned in himbos of equal, puppyish élan in The Lego Movie and Guardians of the Galaxy. Movie’ and watching his creation grow beyond him](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2023-04-05/marios-dad-shigeru-miyamoto-on-the-super-mario-bros-movie-and-watching-his-creation-grow-beyond-him) ... ‘The Super Mario Bros.’ is family-friendly movie theater catnip over the Easter weekend, and it’s sure to be an enjoyable watch for the average viewer.”

"The Super Mario Bros. Movie" has been poorly reviewed by critics, but box office analysts foresee a big opening weekend for the Nintendo video game ...

"The 'Super Mario Bros. NBCUniversal owns Rotten Tomatoes and is the distributor of "The Super Mario Bros. "But 'The Super Mario Bros. Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. "It's that Pratt takes a very distinct character – a short mustachioed plumber in overalls who kicks around turtle shells is anything but average – and gives yet another bland and deflating stock-in-trade performance, which we're familiar with from multiple Guardians of the Galaxy and Lego movies." The movie kicks into gear when "one night the brothers investigate a flood, which is never explained, and find a magical pipe, which is also never explained," wrote Nicholas Barber in his review of the film for BBC. "The trouble starts when Mario is suddenly surrounded by floating bricks, giant gold coins, 'Power Up' cubes, and burbling electronic sound effects, which only make sense in the context of a video game," Barber said. Fans wondered early on if Pratt would attempt the "it's-a-me" accent, and expressed mixed opinions when producers said he wouldn't. At present, forecasts call for "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" to generate more than $100 million over Friday, Saturday and Sunday — and more than $150 million for the full five-day spread starting Wednesday, according to BoxOffice.com. The movie also uses this ad to explain why Mario and Luigi wear giant white gloves. As of Wednesday afternoon, it earned a 54% rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 122 reviews, [a "rotten" score](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_super_mario_bros_movie).