The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)

I was surprised by how awful this is. When the whole Chris Pratt voice drama went through the internet, I enjoyed the memes – but for the sake of the memes, not because I was concerned with the voice actor choices. I should have been, because every single main character in this movie is voiced terrible. I can’t find words for how bad a fit every single one is, and how bad every single one performs. Wow. If you told me this was satire, I would find it more believable.

I admire almost every person on the cast, but that doesn’t change a thing I’m afraid. And I went into this with a positive outlook: I didn’t expect to love it, but given the incredible success at the box office I was sure I’d at least enjoy it. That hope didn’t survive much longer than Mario’s first few sentences being spoken.

It (mostly) looks great, but that’s the only positive thing about it – other than the luckily short runtime of 90 minutes. The dialogue doesn’t merely sound terrible, it is terrible. TikTok level cringe “comedy” writing – fine for a silly blockbuster but not fitting for Mario. In hindsight the cast should have been hint enough that the goal of this project always was the former, not the latter.

While the bits and parts of the various game soundtrack pieces are a delight, the movie soundtrack choices are terribly odd. Again, I love most individual tracks that were chosen, but they don’t fit the movie. It’s like they threw a few big names and a few big songs into a blender and then puked the resulting pseudo-nostalgia blend and all over the most generic and soulless story imaginable.¹

What a shame.

3/10