The Super Mario Bros. Movie

I’ll be honest: I spent most of the 1990s trying to scrub the memory of Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo wandering through a dystopian, fungus-covered version of Manhattan from my brain. For decades, the "Nintendo movie" was a punchline—a cautionary tale about what happens when Hollywood tries to squeeze 8-bit magic into a live-action leather suit. So, sitting in a crowded theater in 2023, watching a kid three seats down vibrate with excitement while wearing a Luigi hat and sporting a tongue turned neon blue by a raspberry ICEE, I felt a strange sense of protective anxiety. Could Illumination actually pull this off?

As it turns out, they didn't just pull it off; they built a billion-dollar cathedral to fan service that manages to be both a relentless assault of Easter eggs and a genuinely breezy adventure.

The Brooklyn-to-Mushroom Kingdom Pipeline

The plot doesn't try to reinvent the fire flower. Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) are struggling Brooklyn plumbers whose "get rich quick" commercial is the only thing more desperate than their actual bank accounts. While trying to fix a massive water main leak—an incident that feels like a nod to the infrastructure-heavy origins of the characters—they get sucked into a green pipe and separated. Mario lands in the candy-colored Mushroom Kingdom, while Luigi finds himself in the "Dark Lands," which looks like a heavy metal album cover designed by a child.

In an era where every franchise feels the need to be a three-hour deconstruction of its own mythos, there is something remarkably refreshing about a 93-minute runtime. It’s a brisk, kinetic journey that prioritizes momentum over "deep" lore. I watched this next to a guy who was clearly counting every single background reference—from the Punch-Out!! pizzeria to the Star Fox posters—and while that "spot the reference" culture can sometimes feel like a chore, here it feels like the movie's heartbeat. Mario’s Brooklyn accent sounds like a guy who’s spent ten minutes in Queens and then decided to base his entire personality on it, but once the action shifts to the fantastical, you stop caring about the celebrity voice-casting drama that dominated Twitter for two years.

Subverting the Damsel and Embracing the Beast

The most significant contemporary shift here is Princess Peach. Voiced with a regal but scrappy energy by Anya Taylor-Joy (The Queen's Gambit), this isn't the "thank you Mario, but our princess is in another castle" version of the character. She’s the mentor, the warrior, and the one teaching Mario how to navigate the platforming madness of her world. It’s a smart pivot that reflects the modern demand for more agency in female leads, and it makes the camaraderie between her and Mario feel earned rather than just a plot requirement.

Then, there’s Jack Black. If this movie is a well-oiled machine, Jack Black is the chaotic soul trapped inside the gears. His Bowser is a glorious mix of Wagnerian menace and middle-school insecurity. The "Peaches" piano ballad is a masterclass in his specific brand of comedic commitment; it’s the kind of moment that goes viral on TikTok within thirty seconds of a movie's release, and for good reason. He manages to make a giant, fire-breathing turtle feel like a jilted high schooler, and it is easily the highlight of the film.

The Scale of the Spectacle

Visually, the film is a triumph of production design. The Rainbow Road sequence, in particular, is a neon-soaked fever dream that captures the frantic, friendship-ending stress of Mario Kart perfectly. Illumination (the studio behind Despicable Me) has often been accused of playing it safe with a "Minion-fied" aesthetic, but here they lean into the textures of the Nintendo world with obsessive detail. The way the power-ups function—the Cat Suit, the Tanooki Suit, the Blue Shell—feels tactile and integrated into the action rather than just a gimmick.

The film's success—a staggering $1.36 billion worldwide—says a lot about our current cinematic moment. We are firmly in the "post-superhero" pivot where video game IP is the new gold mine. But unlike some of the more cynical cash-grabs, The Super Mario Bros. Movie feels like it was made by people who actually enjoy playing the games. It’s not a "prestige" film, and it’s not trying to be The Last of Us. It’s a high-fructose celebration of a brand that has survived every console war of the last forty years.

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The production was a massive undertaking, especially considering the stakes of Nintendo’s first real cinematic foray since the '93 disaster. Apparently, Chris Meledandri of Illumination worked in such close lockstep with Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto that every single brick and Goomba was vetted for "brand accuracy." It clearly paid off.

Interestingly, the film features several cameos from Charles Martinet, the original voice of Mario and Luigi in the games since the 1990s. He plays the brothers' father and a character named Giuseppe, providing a nice bridge between the legacy of the games and this new cinematic era. Despite the massive $100 million budget—which is actually relatively modest for a blockbuster of this scale—the film became the second highest-grossing animated movie of all time during its run, proving that Seth Rogen just playing Seth Rogen as a gorilla is the ultimate IP laziness and I kind of loved it.

This isn't a movie that will change the way you think about the human condition, but it is a movie that understands the pure, unadulterated joy of a well-timed jump. It balances the demands of a global franchise with a lighthearted, comedic touch that keeps the gears from grinding. It’s short, it’s loud, it’s colorful, and it makes you want to go home and dust off your Switch. Sometimes, that’s exactly what a trip to the movies should be.