The Super Mario Galaxy Movie Review

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie Review

The Super Mario Bros Movie released in April 2023 and opened to tremendous success and made over $1 billion. Naturally we got a sequel to that film that was released the other day, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. How is this movie? Is it any good? Let’s talk about it!

The Good

The best thing about this movie is that it’s just a fun world filled with characters that you enjoy spending time with. All of the characters are super fun and charming, all of them have a quirkiness about their personality that makes you enjoy seeing them on the screen. With this movie you get all of the old characters returning mixed with a fun new set of characters. All of the new characters are very fun and fit the chaotic energy of the film nicely. Bowser Jr. as our main antagonist here is a lot of fun and very over the top. The character is kind of fun because he’s this very dangerous creature that has all of this technology and resources but has the brain of a child and wants to be approved by his father. Yoshi is just as cute and adorable as you want him to be. He gets all of these moments in the film that will make audiences fall in love with him. He’s a little bit like Baby Groot in the sense of he’s not saying a lot but he’s able to communicate so much through his cuteness. From there, all of the returning characters are still very fun and charming. Mario and Luigi are together for this movie and on this adventure from start to finish. Bowser is another fun standout here, when you have Jack Black voicing him it’s also a lot of fun because Black is able to bring so much energy to this movie. 

One of the things that works about these Super Mario movies is they got the vibe and esthetic right for these movies. They didn’t craft a great story or anything like that but they immediately got the vibe of Super Mario right. Everything from the music cues, character design, and the world made Mario fans fall in love with these movies. You watch this film and it’s no exception. The movie is jam packed with so many Mario Easter eggs. Whether it’s music cues or video game references there’s so much happening on screen that it’s going to make Mario fans excited. I’m a more casual Mario fan. I’ve primarily only played Mario Kart (about a billion times) and then Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympics when I was younger. But I haven’t played many of the main line Mario games. There’s a lot of references that I missed that die hard fans are going to pick up on and get them very excited. There’s already been some discussion about this film being made for the fans. It shouldn't be critiqued if you’re not a Mario fan. I think that argument is ridiculous. But I think there’s some truth in the fact that this movie is designed for the fans and giving them the experience that they want and I think this movie is going to deliver on that.

Finally, as a big budgeted animated film you have to talk about the animation, and this film is absolutely gorgeous to look at. Piggy backing off of what was just mentioned but there’s so many easter eggs in every shot, to the point where every shot is so colorful and filled with detail. You’re just imagining all of the work that the animators did to make this film come to life. The best example of this comes in the middle of the film when Princess Peach and Toad are at a casino and each side is a different color with different creatures. It looks really incredible admiring all of the detail that went into every shot and making a movie that would get Super Mario fans excited and giddy the way that I was when I saw films like Avengers Endgame or Spider-Man: No Way Home in theaters. 

The Bad

While I praised the film’s ability to give the audience easter eggs related to Super Mario and all of the video games, that’s also where the film’s biggest problem lies. The film feels like it was designed to give the audiences a great experience rather than telling a great story or even having a good script. The film feels like a checkbox list of ideas that the producers had for what they wanted to do with this movie. It feels like they wrote a script with a “story” that could tie those elements together but there’s no throw line to any of them. One of the big marketing elements for this film was Yoshi, but Yoshi doesn’t tie into the plot at all. You think that because they teased him at the end of the last film and put all over the posters and trailers that he’s a big part. He’s very prominent in the film, he’s introduced in the first 10 minutes and is with Mario and Luigi for the rest of the runtime. But you could cut Yoshi from this film and it wouldn’t change at all. There’s this whole random subplot with Yoshi and Toad that involves a dinosaur, that sequence literally goes nowhere. It feels like they put Yoshi in this movie in hopes that he sells merchandise and a bunch of stuffed animals which they’ll probably do. They have Glen Powell voicing Fox McCloud who is this Han Solo type character, and he helps our characters in the film, but I also felt like you could’ve cut him from the film and it wouldn’t really have changed. That’s the big frustration with the film. They introduce a lot of things and do a lot of things, but none of those elements feels necessary to the script. I’m sure they’re wanting to do a Super Smash Bros movie and pull together the Nintendo universe, and this movie sort of just feels like a setup and not like a proper follow-up to the original. 

This kind of ties back to what I just talked about but the film has way too much going on. The film was marketed as Bowser Jr rescuing his father and Mario fans having to go across the galaxy to stop them, that’s the basic setup for the film but there’s so many different subplots going on that it becomes unorganized and unfocused. Where the film is also about Bowser’s redemption arc, Mario starting to fall in love with Princess Peach, Mario and Luigi finding Yoshi, Rosalina gets introduced, Fox McCloud’s introduction, Peach discovering her past, and all of this stuff that’s in a 98 minute long film, with the credits that also include two credit scenes. So this movie has a lot of plot that’s actually very short if you remove the credits. The film is moving at break neck pace from plot point to plot point that none of it feels developed. The big example of this is Rosalina who is basically just a plot device. She’s basically a damsel in distress for like 90% of the movie that our characters are trying to rescue. The film introduces this idea about the connection between Rosalin and Princess Peach that I’m assuming ties into the mythology of the video games but it’s not set up and doesn’t pack the emotional punch that I think the film thought it did. It’s weird to me that Oscar winning actress Brie Larson said yes to being in this movie despite only having about five minutes of screentime and basically book ending the film. 

From there, the script of the movie isn’t very good and doesn’t make much sense. The plot of the movie revolves around Mario, Luigi, and friends rescuing Rosalina after being captured by Bowser Jr. Because of this, it causes our heroes to split up into teams to go and figure out what’s going on. The way this is done is so clunky and makes no sense. This isn’t really spoiling anything but you have Princess Peach and Toad go off on their adventure that leads them to a specific location. Mario, Luigi, and Yoshi are trying to find Princess Peach that leads them to that same specific location. But in the context of the story, it makes absolutely no sense as to why they would split the characters up. The only reason why it feels like the were split up is so you can have more moments for the audience to go “hey look it’s…”. Some of the sequence that come from this are fun but they feel pointless to the overall story being told. 

Finally, I feel like the film didn’t really know what they wanted to do with Bowser. They try and give him a redemption arc and bond with his son throughout the film. You can see the pieces and ingredients of a strong character arc but because the film has too much going on, it’s not able to properly flesh him out, therefore his motivation is very confusing and doesn’t make much sense. The Bowser we meet in his introduction scene, doesn’t at all feel like the same Bowser at the end of the film but not in a compelling in a more frustrating way. It felt like they had multiple screenwriters writing the Bowser character for each act of the film. 

Final Thoughts: The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is going to be a great piece of entertainment for children. There’s plenty of bright colors, jokes, and cute creatures to have little kids absolutely love this movie. I’d also assume that die hard Super Mario fans will have a blast with this movie with exploring all of the different worlds and easter eggs, because there’s certainly a lot of them. I feel like you’re thoughts on this movie is going to depend on what you thought about the original. If you liked the original then you’ll probably like this movie. If you didn’t like that movie at all then this movie won’t work for you. The movie has fun moments and characters but as a whole this movie didn’t really work for me, from the script, storytelling, and over reliance on sight gags and easter eggs. 

The Score: 7.5/10 (C)