The Super Mario Bros. Movie turns a beloved video game series into a movie, and it fails to earn the comparison. The film tries to build a full-length story out of characters who were built for short bursts of action, and the result is a movie that feels thin, rushed, and mostly forgettable.
Trailer, via Illumination.
The Story
The plot follows Mario (Illumination’s version of the character) and Cappy (voiced by Charlie Day) as they try to save Princess Peach from Bowser’s forces. That’s the whole idea. The movie spends most of its runtime explaining how Mario became a plumber and why he can jump high enough to clear platforms, which is exactly the kind of backstory the games never needed and the movies never asked for.
The jokes land inconsistently. Some of the humor aimed at younger viewers lands with a soft thud, while the adult jokes fall flat entirely. There isn’t much chemistry between the leads, and the villain doesn’t get a real arc worth remembering.
The Animation
The animation is bright and polished, with the world built from the same colorful blocks and pipes that defined the games. The action sequences are fast and busy, but they don’t add up to anything that feels new or exciting. The film looks like a video game rendered at feature length, and that’s both a compliment to the source material and a warning about the limits of the source.
The voice cast does what it can with limited material. Charlie Day voices Cappy with energy, but there’s little room for him to grow beyond his comic function. Anya Taylor-Joy voices Peach, and she brings some warmth to a role that gets short shrift. The supporting cast fills out the rest of the Mushroom Kingdom, but none of them get the chance to become memorable.
The Length
At 93 minutes, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is short by modern standards. That brevity should be an advantage — less time to stretch a thin premise thinner — but the pacing still drags in the middle. The film rushes through setup, then stumbles over its own explanations, then rushes again toward the ending. It’s a movie that knows it shouldn’t go on too long, but it can’t find the discipline to stop.
There’s also a strange disconnect between tone and content. The film tries to be both a kids’ adventure and a grown-up comedy, and it never commits fully to either. The jokes aimed at adults land awkwardly, and the jokes aimed at children feel like they’re being spoken down to. The movie wants to appeal to everyone, and it ends up appealing to nobody.
The Soundtrack
The music leans heavily on licensed tracks from the game series, and it’s the one element that mostly works. The familiar themes give the film a sense of place that the script can’t quite deliver. When the film is at its best, it’s borrowing from the games. When it’s at its worst, it’s trying to reinvent them, and that’s where the trouble starts.
The action set pieces are energetic, but they lack weight. Characters survive falls that would kill anyone else, and the film never bothers to explain why. That’s fine in a game, where the rules are understood. It’s jarring in a movie, where the audience expects physics to mean something.
The Verdict
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a pleasant enough way to spend an hour and a half, but it never rises above its source material. It’s a faithful adaptation in spirit, but it fails to capture the spirit of the games that made Mario famous. The jokes miss, the story stalls, and the characters never become more than names on a screen.
The film is fine for fans who want to see their favorite characters on the big screen. It’s less fine for anyone hoping for a story that holds together on its own. It’s a movie that exists to sell nostalgia, not to earn it.
Key Facts Box
– Title: The Super Mario Bros. Movie
– Runtime: 93 minutes
– Voice cast: Charlie Day (Cappy), Anya Taylor-Joy (Princess Peach)
– Score: 4.6/10
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a decent, dull attempt to make a video game into a movie. It’s not bad enough to avoid, and it’s not good enough to recommend. It sits somewhere in the middle, a placeholder between the games that inspired it and the films that could have done more with them.
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