Posted in: Games, Illumination, Movies, Nintendo, Universal | Tagged: The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie Review: Fan Service and Not Much Else

There isn't anything offensively bad going on here, but The Super Mario Galaxy Movie just doesn't appear to be trying very hard aside from appealing to fans and nostalgia. 

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie might level up the fan service, but it's somehow worse and even less fun than the first one.

Directors: Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic, and Pierre Leduc
Summary: Mario ventures into space, exploring cosmic worlds and tackling galactic challenges far from the familiar Mushroom Kingdom.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie Doesn't Reach For The Stars

The first Super Mario film might have lit the box office on fire, but in terms of animation, it wasn't exactly trying to make high art. We always say here that kids are not small, stupid adults; they have a unique way of approaching and thinking about the world, but Illumination seems to think all children want is extremely basic entertainment with absolutely no depth. Maybe that is all people want sometimes, but it doesn't mean the movies aren't anything special, even if they don't have much artistic impact. The Super Mario Galaxy movie levels up the fan service to an even higher extreme than the first film, and the first film had a ton of fan service, but it's not as fun the second time around, and the entire film doesn't come together.

Perhaps this is one of those moments when something just doesn't work more than once. The first film might have made all the money in the world, but was rubberstamping a new movie with new fan service and nothing else to hang it on the right move? Nintendo probably thought so because that is how the games have been approached for the last forty years, and it has worked. However, you don't watch a movie the same way you play a game, and if horror movies have taught us anything, repeating the same thing over and over again isn't the way to go. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie just throws concept after concept at you from Baby Mario and Luigi, to McCloud from StarFox, to Pikman, and nearly all of them are just there as a "hey, look, remember that thing?"

The integration of the game elements into the movie is so much sloppier this time around. The fight between Mario and Donkey Kong in the first movie mimicked the gameplay of a fight when they had a plot reason to fight. They took the visuals and gameplay and found a way to write the story around them. Any moments like this in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie are extremely clunky. There is a scene where we see Mario and Luigi doing "tasks" around the Mushroom Kingdom, and that's going around to different spots in the game, but plot-wise, the scene could be cut and it wouldn't change a thing. The Donkey Kong fight, however, could not be cut because it would mess up a major plot point.

There are a couple of moments when the game elements do blend very well with the plot, notably a scene with Mario and Peach trying to get into the area where Roslina is being held, but there are just as many that feel like cannon fodder. As a StarFox fan, the series has always been heavily influenced by Star Wars, but did we really need to copy-paste Han Solo onto Fox McCloud for this film, almost word-for-word? The Bowsers are also not nearly as fun this time around as they were in the first film. If you were a fan of the Peaches song, you're going to be disappointed, because there isn't anything like that here. The humor for the villains, specifically, is very much one of the things that didn't make it from one movie to another.

Nothing Worse Than Being Bland

All of this makes the movie sound really bad, but unfortunately, it comes down to an even worse fate: blandness. A movie like this, so busy and colorful, shouldn't ever be boring, but those 90ish minutes felt like they went on forever. A movie with this many jokes should illicit a giggle, but they were few and far between. There isn't anything offensively bad going on here, but The Super Mario Galaxy Movie just doesn't appear to be trying very hard aside from appealing to fans and nostalgia.

When Sonic the Hedgehog 3 came out, we talked about the concept of "second hand joy" and knowing that even though something might not be your thing, it is for everyone else in this theater, and their happiness is infectious. It's one of the things that makes the theatrical experience incredible. This was a closed press screening, but there were so many moments when you could tell a packed theater was supposed to cheer or react that it would have been more fun if you were surrounded by people who were having the time of their lives. So, in some ways, this film is a perfect example of why movie theaters need to exist; experiencing it with fans will likely elevate it for someone who isn't quite on board.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie didn't try very hard, but The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is making even less of an attempt. There will be fans of this one who love it, and we love that for them. As previously stated, seeing it in a packed theater with people losing their minds is always a good experience. However, looking at just the movie we got, there isn't much there. We can hope this is an adaptation and Illumination problem and not a Nintendo problem with The Legend of Zelda lurking right around the corner.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

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Review by Kaitlyn Booth

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5/10

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie might level up the fan service, but it's somehow worse and even less fun than the first one.

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