Every so often, a movie comes along that strikes a chord with a certain audience, and I am very much not in that audience. Did The Super Mario Brothers Movie sell a bunch of tickets? Eh, probably. I don’t care to check. I’m not a video game guy, so the reason I go to see something like it is because I tend to go to see as much as possible whether I am in the target audience or not. You can see my review for the first movie through the hyperlink. It wasn’t a favorite, but I did find Jack Black’s performance as Bowser entertaining.
All that is to say I went to see the sequel, The Super Mario Brothers Galaxy Movie, and this time, Luigi actually gets something like equal screen time to Mario, making the title more accurate.
Off on a space station, Princess Rosalina (voice of Brie Larson) calls her star children to their bedtime–no, the movie does not explain how these are her children, so I guess they’re adopted–when she is kidnapped by Bowser Jr. (Benny Safdie), a chip off the old block with some kind of magic paintbrush weapon. While that is going on, Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charley Day) rescue a dinosaur named Yoshi (Donald Glover), and from there, they head off to the Mushroom Kingdom for Princess Peach’s (Anya Taylor-Joy) birthday party when a star child thing shows up, asking Peach to rescue Rosalina. Peach agrees, taking Toad (Keegan-Michael Key) with her and leaving Mario and Luigi (with Yoshi) to take care of the Mushroom Kingdom, including the still-tiny Bowser (Jack Black).
Of course, it isn’t long before Mario and Luigi follow Peach out into space, where both groups land on different planets, and even team up with Fox McCloud (Glen Powell) from a completely different game. See, Bowser Jr. really wants to finish what his father started, and that means getting his dad back, and then taking some captured Princess Power to do, let’s just say bad things. Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Yoshi will have their work cut out for them to save the galaxy. Or the universe. Maybe the title of the movie isn’t expansive enough.
So, as I watched this one, I couldn’t help but think how much more I would get if I were more familiar with the games. I am not completely ignorant on the Super Mario Brothers’ world, but when I see what look vaguely like Minion robots, and knowing Illumination made this and has another Minions movie coming out this year (ugh), I don’t know if that was a nod to the game or the company. That wouldn’t bother me much if it weren’t for the fact that that could describe most of the movie. There are some decent jokes, nothing that made me laugh, but it seems so rote. The voice cast doesn’t help much either. They either are rather average-sounding actors like Pratt, Taylor-Joy, Powell, or Larson who I just know are voiced by name actors but I couldn’t tell just from their voice, or their voices are altered, as is the case for Key and especially Glover, to the point where I have to ask why they even bothered casting those guys, and I like those actors. As far as distinctive voices, there’s still Day and especially Black, and while Black gives it his usual gusto, there’s nothing that really stands out this time like his “Peaches” song from the first movie. Everything just feels rote.
And on that note, there’s something I noticed about a short post-credits scene. Without saying what happened, there’s a quick appearance after the credits of a character that probably means something to Super Mario Brothers fans, and with this movie, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (fourth one coming next year), and even the Minecraft Movie had a post-credits scene referencing or giving a cameo to some character that only means something to players of the game, and I just sit there wondering what the significance is unless there’s a helpful kid nearby to explain it to his mom like happened with A Minecraft Movie. I wonder, is this how people who went to MCU movies with minimal knowledge of Marvel Comics lore felt with those post-credits scenes? I remember one of my sisters emailing me after Captain America: The Winter Soldier came out, asking who “the twins” were, and while I was happy to oblige (and wondering why she didn’t ask our brother who lives closer to her), it does occur to me that this is the sort of thing I maybe should start to expect when it comes to video game adaptations on the big screen.
Grade: C
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