The arc of the video game adaptation can be charted, funnily enough, through the history of Super Mario Bros. on the big screen. Much as 1993’s “Super Mario Bros.,” with its strange cyberpunk aesthetic and dizzying mishmash of tones between family-friendly romp and dystopian thriller (Dennis Hopper as King Koopa?!), was a disaster upon release, there were moments during “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” that I longed for a big, ridiculous swing like that. But we’re in an age where the audience wants fidelity in their video game movies: Ever since the first “Sonic the Hedgehog” movie backtracked on its (admittedly horrifying) initial design for the Blue Blur after fan backlash and was richly rewarded for it, big-budget video game movies have banked on delivering exactly what they see when they play the game at home—no more, no less. 2023’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” did just that, tossing in a dopey Chris Pratt voice performance and your classic Illumination Studios hijinks, and became the highest-grossing video game adaptation of all time. Bully for them. But with that success comes a sequel, and it pains me to inform you that “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” feels like more of the same, but even more thinly rendered and rushed.
As the title implies, the film is a loose (and I mean extremely loose) adaptation of 2007’s “Super Mario Galaxy,” which took our favorite Italian plumber to the stars as he zipped around various worlds, jumping on various creatures until he got Princess Peach back. Now, the stakes are thus: Bowser Jr. (Benny Safdie, for some reason), in a bid to break his father out of the tiny prison Mario (Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) put him in at the end of the first film, builds a fleet of spaceships and steals cosmic Princess Rosalina (Brie Larson) as part of a larger plan to conquer the universe. Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) and Toad (Keegan-Michael Key) jet off to space and leaves the titular bros., with newfound dinosaur pal Yoshi (Donald Glover) in tow—oh yeah, he’s here now, introduced into the gang with little fanfare, don’t worry about it—to mind the kingdom and look after li’l Bowser (Jack Black), who’s on his own therapyspeak “healing journey” to deal with his anger issues. Of course, that doesn’t last long, and all four have to zoom into the cosmos to save it.
Much like the last one, the plotting is “Mario Galaxy”‘s biggest problem, screenwriter Matthew Fogel rushing us from one episodic encounter to the next without asking whether any of it ties together coherently. In one moment, we’re watching Rosalina fend off a giant robot with anime-like skills, only for her to be frustratingly sidelined for the majority of the picture. What few character beats they might set up get shoved off to one-off gags, or little two-line check-ins every twenty minutes, so we can keep those balls in the air and the digestible sight gags flowing. Will Mario ever ask Peach out on a date? Is Bowser really turning over a new leaf? Who knows, and who cares, really?
Sue me, but I kinda wanted them to do something with the fact that Toad is rightfully pissed that Yoshi just gets to become Mario and Luigi’s best buds while he has to sit there on the sidelines. Instead, all the dialogue is perfunctory, with nobody really getting to stand out in their voice performances, particularly Pratt, who’s as lost at sea with Mario here as he was last time. Black, meanwhile, is also stuck in tiny mode for much of the picture, so the voice modulation takes all the bluster out of his barking. (No “Peaches” reprise, sorry kids.) Sure, the film looks nice and bright and richly-textured, I’ll give it that; it’s about as gorgeous as a true-to-game Mario movie should probably be. I just wish directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic had seen fit to let us linger on any of those beautiful images long enough for them to register.
Really, the bread and butter of these Illumination movies is all the point-and-lean Leo-meme Easter eggs that offer catnip to undiscerning video game fans. It doesn’t really matter why the thing you recognize is there, or whether it’s important or interesting; the only thing that matters is that you recognize it, and isn’t that fun for you? Aren’t those Lumas cute with their baby voices? Isn’t it adorable when a shrink ray (which looks suspiciously like an old NES Zapper) turns Mario and Luigi into little snaggle-toothed toddlers? Oh, wow, Bowser Jr.’s monitoring screens look just like the old side-scroller games, complete with the music! The score, meanwhile, leans more on Brian Tyler’s original orchestrations, so we’re at least spared the obnoxious needle-drops from the last one. The only one of these broader Nintendo references that works (and I’ll betray my bias here, as “StarFox” was more my jam as a kid) is the extended cameo from Fox McCloud (Glen Powell), who gets to serve as a Han Solo-esque space rogue who helps our heroes late in the film. He’s in it for more than I expected, and Tyler weaves in the propulsive soundtrack from the game in ways that, I’ll cop, made me clap like a seal a bit. Maybe I just want a “StarFox” movie instead.
“The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” moves through you so briskly that you’ll get whiplash by the time the film reaches its deeply abrupt ending. But maybe that’s the point—after all, this is not a movie to be scrutinized, but to allow beleaguered elder millennial dads to sit their tots down for a precious two hours (if you count the trailers) and get some much-needed rest. It’s cute, and breezy, and rock-stupid, and will probably make a billion dollars again. Such is the world in which we live.
