Super Mario Bros. Movie review: not quite a super show, but a potent nostalgia tour

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It’s taken decades, but video game movies have finally come full circle with the release of The Super Mario Bros. Movie. It was 1993’s Super Mario Bros. that kicked off Hollywood’s regular flirtations with video game adaptations – and the same film in many ways came to represent the infamy that video game movies have enjoyed since. Put simply, it was rubbish – though also filled with imagery that would make it a quiet cult classic. Now, Nintendo has partnered with Illumination, the studio behind the Minions, to break the curse.

By many measures, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is successful. By others, it is much less so – but be rest assured that anybody saying that this film is ‘as bad as’ or even remotely comparable to its nineties cousin is talking hyperbolic rubbish. This movie is in a different area code. The question is, is it actually as good as its present peers? The world of cinematic gaming conversions is very different in 2023 than in the nineties; in fact, the competition is quite fierce.

The choice of Illumination is, well, illuminating. This is a studio that I’d argue isn’t really about the art in the way some others are- certainly not in the Scorsese sense, but even within the kids’ space when compared to the likes of Pixar. In these stakes, I’d even place them south of Dreamworks Animation. But what Illumination is extremely adept at is making films that press the buttons of audiences, especially the young, in the right ways. They’re never particularly substantive, but they work. And such is the case for the Super Mario Bros. Movie.

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