It's-a-good-movie, Mario!

Haters are gonna hate but I enjoyed The Super Mario Bros. Movie!

Thar Be Spoilers in This Article!

First of all, I should have taken a screenshot last night when I went to Rotten Tomatoes after I returned home from the show. I’m sure that the critics’ rating was 57%, and the audience was in the nineties. Today, the critic rating is 54%, and there is NO audience score! WTF?

Anyway, last night I saw the new Super Mario Brothers movie, and I enjoyed it very much.

There are spoilers in my piece, so don’t read any further if you don’t want spoilers.

As a nerd of a certain age who had children, I’ve seen all kinds of Mario shows and movies and this and thats. I’m not a Mario specialist by any means and am only a casual gamer.

One of my adult children is a big gamer, has all the systems, all the games and has a channel on Twitch where he plays games and talks about the history of the games and shows little documentaries on how games were created. So, I also know a bit about things from occasionally watching his channel.

I always pick Donkey Kong when I play Smash Brothers because I like to smash, punch, and throw things.

 Anyway, I wanted to see Super Mario Brothers on opening night, which is how I like to see most movies I’m excited about so that I don’t get exposed to spoilers and reviews and haters.

I managed to elude spoilers and commercials and social media gripes with the exception of the first trailer that dropped. I saw that. It’s too bad most of the cool stuff was in that trailer, but that’s the nature of trailers these days. They spoil all the surprises.

I saw the movie in 3D with AVX sound and D-Box chairs. That is the perfect way to see this movie unless you can somehow see it in IMAX with AVX sound and D-box chairs, but I don’t think that exists. One day we’ll be able to sit in D-Box chairs at an IMAX theatre in my area, I hope!

The movie is like being in a giant video game, you know, like Star Wars or the Marvel movies. So you know you want all the bells and whistles when you’re watching it.

Since, for me, it was a sensory experience as well as a movie experience, I had a lot of fun and really enjoyed the whole shebang.

The animation was amazing. It was quite spectacular, and the perspective worked well. Since so much of the movie was like being in a video game, it often felt like I was on a ride at the amusement park in the chair.

The story was very basic, and I really didn’t expect anything complicated, so I wasn’t disappointed.

The explanation about accents was tackled in the first few minutes, so everyone can just cool their jets on all of that.

Jack Black was amazing as Bowser and apparently wrote the song as well.

All of the casting worked well as far as I was concerned. I laughed at Toad, I enjoyed Princess Peach, Mario and Luigi were great, Donkey Kong was Donkey Kongy in all his bad assery. I had no issues with any of the voice acting.

There was a lack of a lot of Yoshi, but I suspect the next movie will be Yoshi Island.

The music was great; I loved all the themes and callbacks.

I left the theatre feeling happy and hopeful. It’s a movie you can take the kids to and just relax and enjoy it. No weird double-entendres, no fart jokes, fat jokes, sex jokes, no shoehorned woke agenda or other stupid stuff. Just clean, wholesome murderous fun with a happy ending.

I guess the critics don’t like a happy movie that doesn’t subvert expectations.

In fact, after all the Star Wars trauma of the past few years, it was refreshing to go to a movie that turned out to be exactly what I thought it would be but even MORE FUN, and it didn’t tease, torment, or gaslight me. I went to a Mario game movie, and that’s exactly what I got, with real Mario music and even a cameo by the original Mario voice actor, Charles Martinet.

You can take your kids to see this movie over the Easter weekend and not worry about having to explain some weird life thing to them or cringe in your seat. And make sure you stay until the very end of the credits.

Whoo-hoo!

Did YOU like the movie? Share your thoughts in the comment section!