Super Mario Bros Movie: Finally a Movie Made for Me

talking about how the super mario movie portrays italian americans, and all the mario easter eggs!

Its-a Me. Chris Pratt

I saw the Mario Movie.

It was great!

End of Review.

My Expectations Were Met

I saw the Mario Movie on opening day. I was fully expecting it to be an illumination cash grab at gamers like myself. I was expecting it to be dotted with relevant celebrities, cheesy one-liners, and a terrible nothing story.

I was absolutely right.

Normally I would hate on a movie like this. Something this blatant, this corporate. I would despise this movie. But I loved it! For once I am the audience they are pandering to. All the references, all the musical cues, all the little things each character does. I got all the references. It felt so great.

Some of my friends took some convincing to go see the movie. My line was this, “I waited my entire life for a movie like this! To have them pander to me. Not comic books, but video games.” Child me would not want to miss out on this movie.

The story was without a doubt … nothing. Nothing special, nothing of substance, nothing new. We get to see Mario and Luigis parents, and the rest of their family. Which I guess is new, but they aren’t really expanded on.

Comparing the Movie to the Games

The Mario games are iconically sparse in their narrative. This did not give the movie much to work with, but from my perspective the movie did a good job of piecing together the disparate pieces of Nintendo lore and fandom including the many disconnected games into a cohesive whole.

The game takes place in literal Brooklyn with an advertisement done in cheesy 80’s style showcasing the actual plumbing service for the titular Bros. Their adventure begins with them as struggling Italian plumbers in Brooklyn looking for work. Its captivating enough just to see a Mario easter egg filled New York. Eventually they are sucked into the world of princess Peach, the toads, and bowser.

The narrative is the usual, bowser is going to kidnap and marry princess peach. Though Jack Black’s performance highlights the strange nature of an interaction like this with voiced characters. He does a fantastic job. A huge monster just wants to marry the princess of another kingdom through force? That’s a little weird.

The story is of mario meeting peach, training montage, finding donkey kong, and exploring tons of other references to mario media. For the Mario lore nerds out there you will have a great time with this movie.

Comparing the Mario Movie To Shazam

The thing I really appreciated about this movie was how trimmed of fat it was. Recently I also saw the second shazam movie.

The worst thing about that movie was the story, and how much of my god damn time it wasted. The character writing, and actors were all great. Yes they were cheesy, but they were supposed to be. What sucked was the boring plot treating itself like it was doing something revolutionary. The third act was a fucking drag of all the fun characters being reduced to the most boring versions of themselves and floundering for 20 minutes.

Then at the end of the movie all consequence is eradicated with a literal Deus Ex Machina reviving those lost along the way. I should have walked out at the end of the second act.

The Mario movie does not do this. It ends exactly when it feels right, and wastes no time not throwing new stuff at you. Deep down it knows that it has no story. Once it ran out of new fun stuff the plot was over.

Who does this movie appeal to?

Would you like this movie if you don’t know much about Mario? No, absolutely not. If you are not getting the musical motifs, the many references, and the fun homages to many different pieces of the games the movie stems from what you are left with is a fun quick adventure movie that I don’t think is necessarily worth its runtime.

However for me it was awesome. Every second was full of references. I found it hard to take my eyes off the screen as I scanned every corner for new little tidbits.

The one thing that shined through with this movie was a love for the franchise. You can tell that the people making the movie, the props, the worlds, and the writing, all really cared about the Mario universe. They wanted to show them off in the best light, while still providing some sort of small narrative reason for all these characters to be interacting.

As an Italian-American this movie also struck me as one of the only positive references to Italian-Americans that I could think of in media. Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, the Godfather, Meet the Fockers, the Italian Americans in media are typically always portrayed as gangsters or hard-asses.

By the end of the movie I truly found myself tearing up, not at anything that the movie does in-particular, but at the feeling of actually having a positive representation of an Italian American character. Finally something not dooming me to being a mobster! I too, can be the hero of the story. I truly was not expecting that. Good job Mario Movie!

So yeah! It was pretty good!

Wahoo!