FORMAT: DVD
Super Mario Bros. is one of the most perplexing video game adaptations ever made. It would be easy to categorize it as one of the worst if only the genre wasn’t littered with so many lousy movies. (Many of which were directed by Uwe Boll.) In fact, the biggest problem is that it strays so far away from the source material that it never really feels like a Super Mario Bros. movie. Taken on its own merits, it’s still a sloppy, weird, and occasionally amusing Sci-Fi flick. It’s just that it is bound to disappoint anyone expecting a halfway faithful adaptation of the beloved Nintendo video game.
Mario (Bob Hoskins) and Luigi (John Leguizamo) are two plumbers who try to save a princess (Samantha Mathis) who is kidnapped and taken to a subterranean parallel universe lorded over by King Koopa (Dennis Hopper). He’s trying to merge the two worlds into one kingdom with him ruling over everyone. Oh, and he wants to turn everybody in our world into monkeys too. It’s then up to the two plumbing brothers to stop him.
The casting is pretty good. Hoskins is spot-on as Mario and Leguizamo has an infectious playfulness about him as Luigi. Hopper looks like he’s having fun chewing scenery as the baddie and while Richard Edson and Fisher Stevens don’t elicit laughs per se, they have chemistry together as his bumbling goons. Lance Henriksen also has a random blink-and-you-miss-it cameo at the end. The oddest bit of casting is Mojo Nixon as Toad. No matter how bad it gets, I can’t completely hate any movie that has Mojo Nixon in it.
Although the production design looks expensive, it also manages to be ugly and inconsistent. The “Dinohattan” stuff is decent as it looks like a low rent Demolition Man sort of thing. Some of the action is OK (like when Mario’s car winds up on top of another car during a chase scene) and the effects (especially Yoshi) are pretty good too. It’s just… you know… it never feels like a Super Mario Bros movie. Honestly, it probably played better when it was originally released. Now that we have the animated Super Mario Bros. Movie, a near-perfect translation of the game, this just kind of feels pointless now. That said, it’s better than its reputation may have led you to believe, but it never really works either.
i disagree about this movie feeling "pointless" to me the animated movie was kinda generic and forgettable, I liked how different this movie was from the source material, that made it far more interesting then the Illumination movie for me.
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