6/12 ForReel Score | 2.5/5 Stars

Many have slammed The Super Mario Galaxy Movie for being “for babies.” This is used as a pejorative despite what anyone still engaging with the Nintendo franchises knows to be true. This world has always been for babies. When I think of Mario, I’m often tracing back to some of my earliest life experiences. Mario 64 at the daycare or babysitter’s house. Smash Bros in the kids barbershop. Multiplayer Mario Kart DS on the school bus. Heated 3 hour Mario Party matches at the sleepover. These characters followed me throughout my developing years, engraining the very concept of solo and social game play into my brain. They were as omnipresent as I’d imagine the Looney Tunes were to Gen X and Baby Boomers.

With the Millennial and Gen-Z audiences locked in for life, Nintendo has shifted focus to their kids. These Mario movies are built to teach today’s children how to watch movies. These basic but loveable archetypes plug into a hyper traditional narrative structure and allow the sheer bombast to captivate young minds enough for them to want to watch it again and again. The experiment is clearly working. My theater was filled with kids who screamed with glee when they realized that this was about to start. From an adult perspective, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is a slight step down from the threadbare but amusing megahit that turned Nintendo into Universal’s new teflon money printer. It knows that five year olds are undemanding and that parents are exhausted. Capturing the wondrous innovation of the 2007 Wii Game it strips for parts is a stretch goal at best. Yet, it still feels so completely in spirit with the Nintendo; it’s an innocent excuse to let your brain cells float in zero gravity.

We reunite with Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) as they discover the adorable Yoshi (Donald Glover) in the desert town of Tosterena. The three become fast friends. Mario is mulling over telling Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) that he’s catching feelings at her birthday ceremony, but distractions quickly get in the way. Peach is summoned by a luma star to save interstellar Princess Rosalina (Brie Larson) who has been kidnapped by robot piloting scamp Bowser Jr (Benny Safdie). He quickly turns his sights on the Mario Brothers in an effort to free his father (Jack Black) from being held captive in the mushroom kingdom. The characters platform and fight until Illumination runs out of ideas for visual gags and cameos, cuing the credits.

This entire gang are glorified action figures and the star studded cast perform them as such with varying levels of enthusiasm. All of the actors playing humans seem totally lost. Chris Pratt and Anya Taylor-Joy struggle to lend much personality to characters who are in the story to tell us where we are going and what we are doing next. Charlie Day tries to strike up a bit of comedic chemistry with Pratt, but he’s often left firing off punchlines to silence. Rosalina, a consistent and stunning presence throughout Mario Galaxy, is kidnapped and barely addressed again until the third act of the film. This leaves die hard Nintendo enthusiast Brie Larson with a maximum of twenty lines. Even her Oscar winning talents cannot turn this version of Roslinia into more than a mildly powerful but incompetent figure whose main personality trait is being a mother to stars. Egregious waste of the celebrity most poised to sell these films as a labor of love on the press tour.

Meanwhile, the creatures are having a blast. Benny Safdie is a surprise standout as the adorably temperamental Bowser Jr who is so sincerely excited to be reunited with his father. This gives Jack Black a fun new dynamic to play with as he returns to gleefully overacting as Bowser. Donald Glover is totally unrecognizable voicing Yoshi and despite a couple of noises that are inventions of his, the film completely commits to Yoshi not saying anything but his name. Yoshi becomes a total afterthought after act one, beyond being a prop in the action sequences but he sure is cute. The film also introduces furry fighter pilot Star Fox (Glen Powell) so that the characters don’t spend all of the space sequences jumping through gravity loops to get from A to B like they do in the game. Shortly after he’s introduced, he and Mario give each other quizzical looks implying that they might have beef over Peach’s attention, only to immediately decide on being friends. This ensures that Fox does not have any personality beyond cheering with joy while flying the ship. Powell certainly sounds more caffeinated than Pratt, but in typical form brings nothing to the table. He’s playing a kid friendly Hangman on autopilot.

It’s more fun to look at than listen to. Every location is densely packed with little guys from games new and old. It becomes a game of “I-Spy an NPC with my little eye.” These appearances often don’t draw attention to themselves, just clever set dressing if you’re not in the know. Directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic are not particularly concerned with capturing the gameplay loop from Mario Galaxy. There are certainly homages to the game’s psychedelic planet hopping, but the set-pieces largely indulge in standard but vividly animated earthbound platforming antics or Smash Bros style fistfights. The action even occasionally transitions to 8-Bit footage to cover up some big moves and transitions that the team didn’t have the bandwidth to animate. This would usually aggravate me, but I’d imagine that trying to realize the Galaxy levels in longer form would be nauseating to both the animators and viewers. It’s a concept very specifically built for gaming, but the increase in scope allows this to feel like a more large scale sequel.

The general onslaught of video game movies are creating a media landscape where kids are growing up without sincere heroes who aren’t trying to sell them something. The Sonic and Minecraft movies raise my blood pressure with their unrelenting live action laziness. However, Illumination and Nintendo’s complete commitment to transferring the game world to film via animation makes these Mario movies feel less cynical in their mediocrity. They are competently engineered cinematic training wheels. They may not have the depth to endure beyond core memories but thankfully, Nintendo is still pumping out brilliant Mario games. Hopefully, parents are taking the time to play them together instead of slipping these familiar faces a twenty dollar bill to babysit their kids while they catch up on emails.

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