I didn’t mind the first Super Mario movie, but felt it had run into the same problem that I have with most of Illumination’s recent films. Thanks to the nature and success of the Minions, Illumination films have become a sequence of short films smashed together with a thinly veiled plot. The last film had a little bit more of a plot, but felt like a rushed attempt to wizz through the Mario series as quickly as possible, and tick boxes to keep kids happy. And that’s the biggest problem I have with Illumination, they just aim at kids, and don’t try to appeal to adults, when other studios are doing so with great success.
When Princess Rosalina is captured by Bowser Jr, Princess Peach, Mario and Luigi go to help her people, before Bowser Jr can reunite with his father, and continue their plan of destroying the galaxy.
Does this film fall into the trap that’s recurring for Illumination of barely having a plot? Yes. It’s difficult, I appreciate that Mario and his games, don’t have a great deal of story to them and are generally about skill or problem solving. Something I don’t think the writers seem to understand, or maybe it’s a studio problem as it seems to be recurring for them. A big benefit of Mario as a character is the insanely wide variety of games he’s been in from Mario Kart, to sports games, to party games, to RPG’s or adventure. I think these films have a chance to add story to a world that doesn’t particularly have much, let a new audience connect to these characters rather than giving us stripped basics. I think the writing in general is really poor, and I think fans of these characters deserve better. It’s clear this could be the start of a cinematic universe, and if it’s going that way then the writing needs to be a lot stronger.
The animation itself is very highly detailed, there’s a lot of detail to buildings, trees, the worlds themselves, and materials which I appreciate. Even the character designs are strong themselves, and I’m glad they didn’t turn the characters into a typical style, and kept them true to what we see in the games, something I can imagine was something that Nintendo demanded.
The voice cast do another fine job. The cast varies from absolutely nailing it to doing the bare minimum. Ironically it’s people with a smaller amount of screen time that do the best jobs. Benny Safdie as Bowser Jr is particularly the standout, nailing both a voice that takes some clear similarities from Jack Black’s Bowser and feeling fresh, and his own take, something I didn’t expect from Benny honestly. I also think the likes of Brie Larson and Glen Powell do a fantastic job as Rosalina and Fox McCloud, and I hope to see more in the inevitable sequels or spin-offs. A very big shoutout to Donald Glover as Yoshi, how much he actually does that isn’t modified I’d love to know, because it’s unrecognisable.
Overall, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is a continued failure of trying to squeeze too much into one film, focusing on easter eggs (I suppose it is Easter Weekend). The film has good ideas, but doesn’t let you sit with one and would rather move onto the next short story and make the obvious joke. It’s wild in a world where we’ve had great animation that appeals to the whole audience, that one studio is still insistent on focusing solely on the children audience. And yet it continues to deliver at the box office, so the lesson will never be learned. We continue to hope that maybe the next one will be good. The games might be fun for the whole family, but these films are focused on one target market.
What did you think of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie?
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