After too many years in the making, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is finally out and we positively love it. Mike has already gone ahead and done us the honour of penning our spoiler free review for it, but I still feel the need to discuss many factors of this amazing creation. Unlike Mike, however, everything I will go on to say will not be spoiler free so please take this as your first and only warning.
With that unpleasantry out of the way, it’s time for our second topic, the portrayal of both Mario Bros.:
Super Movie Bros.:
For a film literally called The Super Mario Bros. Movie, like I said earlier, Mario and Luigi feel more like secondary protagonists than they do main protagonists. In fact, I’d go out on a limb to say I feel like the film wasted Luigi. He has a few good scenes and he really comes into his own at the end of the film, but, despite his best efforts, Charlie Day’s Luigi, comes off as being a little too much of a whiney coward.
Some bravery is found nearer to the film’s end, but although Charlie Day puts on a fine performance, Luigi still feels underused, especially when he misses out on driving his very own kart and giving a blue shell his infamous death stare. Still, what blue shell action we did get was brilliantly done and just right, but what of Mario himself?
Voiced by Chris Pratt, I’m still on the fence regarding how I felt about his vocal portrayal, but he gives it a good go and it was still awfully brave of him to want to jump onboard a project such as this and attempt to fill Charles Martinet’s shoes.
As for the character we see on screen, as much as I really wanted to support Mario and love this version of him, I felt at times he was being deliberately held back and that it was unfair. Whilst still in the real world, there’s a scene where we’re treated to seeing Mario and Luigi do a bit of parkour, during a side-scrolling segment that felt like something from both the original and the New Super Mario Bros. games.
Luigi is more of a plain Jane with his movements but Mario is rather swift and precise with his leaps and jumps. Yet, a short while later on in the film, when Peach introduces him to an obstacle course in the Mushroom Kingdom to see if he deserves to be her sidekick, viewers are treated to a montage of Mario failing. It’s funny, it’s comedic and rather well done, but having seen what he could do earlier on, it feels like a way of showing Mario up by making Princess Peach look better than him.
Still, as far as the brothers go, it was a decent effort on both the actors’ parts and I would like to see more of them, or at least watch a film that puts more of a focus on them as they are the Super Mario Bros., instead of what we actually got, which is more “Not so Super Mario and his Super Friends.” Mind you, I’d love to see Luigi get a spin-off in the form of a Luigi’s Mansion film or series.
Naturally, all views above are entirely my own and I would love to hear what you guys thought of The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Thank you for reading.
