The Super Mario Bros Movie is a deranged mishmash

If you thought Chris Pratt’s voice performance was going to be the weak link, you might be surprised to discover there’s a lot of competition.

At least Todd is super cute. Picture: Universal

How much of a free pass do you get from goodwill and nostalgia? Or is it actually doubly hard if you’re tinkering with something hundreds of millions of people have a connection to?

Audiences under a certain vintage will have fond memories of manoeuvring a little bouncing plumber in red, whether it was 30 years ago on those old, grey Game Boy bricks or last week, drunkenly challenging your mates to Mario Kart, insistent that you are the champion of the Yoshi Circuit.

So, when there’s an animated movie adaptation, there’s no doubt you’ll get a kick out of seeing bits of gameplay incorporated on the big screen. Eating a power-up mushroom, jumping atop a speeding Bullet Bill or throwing a Koopa shell at an opponent will unlock a little “wahoo” from your inner child.

But it’s not enough to be jump up and down and go, “Look! Look over here! It’s all the fun parts of Mario you like!” when the whole package is a deranged mishmash of overstimulating elements.

For kids only. Picture: Universal

In The Super Mario Bros Movie, Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) are Brooklyn brothers who have just struck out on their own to start their plumbing business. But their old boss and their dad think they’re destined to fail.

This crisis of faith from everyone else also bolsters Mario to prove the naysayers wrong so when the opportunity comes to save his borough from the plumbing disaster, he goes in all wrenches ablazing.

He and Luigi are sucked through a Bifrost-esque portal to other worlds – Mario to the Mushroom Kingdom and Luigi to the Dark Lands. Mario needs to rescue his baby brother and help to save the Mushroom Kingdom from a conquering Bowser (Jack Black) who’s on the tear in his bid to marry Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy).

There are also classic Mario characters including Donkey Kong (Seth Rogen) and the very adorable Toad (Keegan Michael-Key).

If you think of The Super Mario Bros Movie as only a diverting entertainment product aimed purely at younger kids, then the movie directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic makes sense.

It’s not unlike the Trolls movies, overstuffed with cacophonous sounds and action that whizzes through a frame in half a second, all contained within a rainbow and glitter palette that will give a headache to anyone over single digits.

Jack Black is the voice of villain Bowser. Picture: Universal

But if it’s designed to hit more than one sliver of the overall audience pie, if it’s meant to offer something to begrudging parents and or child-free adults hoping for a nostalgia ride than The Super Mario Bros Movie does not work.

There are too many things going on, little emotional investment in anyone’s fate, a terrible script and characters with as much depth as, um, the first iteration of the Super Mario Bros game.

You get away with that more in a game environment when the player controls the character, transposing themselves into the story. But as a passive viewer of a movie, it needs to do a lot more to hook someone.

Just being loud and busy, or throwing in some clever references to the games, is not enough. The only thing is does do is make you reconsider the much-derided 1993 live action Mario movie with Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo. In comparison, that’s not looking so bad.

Rating: 1.5/5

The Super Mario Bros Movie is in cinemas now

Originally published as The Super Mario Bros Movie is a deranged mishmash