A Frustrating Game Over: ‘The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’ is a Sugar Rush Lacking Substance 

By Jackson TOYON

Illumination Entertainment, the animation studio behind the “Minions,”  in 2023 was fresh off its successful first collaboration with gaming industry monolith Nintendo. While it received mixed sentiment from critics, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” was an undisputed box office smash and had plenty of viewers who enjoyed the thinly plotted film. If nothing else, it was well-animated and had an original soundtrack that was an unmistakable love letter to the people who grew up on Nintendo games. This year, it’s taking a second crack at it and continuing the story by attempting to adapt one of the Mario franchise’s most beloved games to film – “Super Mario Galaxy.”

Princess Rosalina (Brie Larson), guardian of the cosmos, is putting to bed the young lumas (starlike creatures) whom she acts as an adoptive mother to when she is abruptly kidnapped by an unknown villain. Back down on the ground in the Mushroom Kingdom, brothers Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) are going on adventures and performing their job as souped-up plumbers when they meet and befriend the iconic dinosaur Yoshi (Donald Glover). Later, at a birthday ceremony for Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy), a luma who escaped the assault on Rosalina’s Comet Observatory, warns Peach of what happened and seeks her help in rescuing their mother. Taking care of the kingdom in her absence, the brothers are soon attacked by the same villain – Bowser Jr. (Benny Safdie), son of the evil Bowser (Jack Black) that our heroes defeated in the last movie and are currently rehabilitating. Seeking to free his father from his imprisonment, Junior’s UFO transports the brothers and Yoshi to another galaxy, further separating our characters from each other. Joined by other Nintendo characters like Fox McCloud (Glen Powell), our group must reunite so that they can take on the Bowser family together and free the kidnapped princess, restoring balance to the galaxy.

If that plot description sounds like an uncomfortably fast-paced mess, it’s because there are not many other words that would be as apt and accurate to define it. This film is an unrelenting firehose of plot beats with no time to savor them, boatloads of Nintendo references and Easter eggs and unnecessary scenes. It may be primarily made for younger audiences, but younger audiences deserve good stories, too, and this is hardly a story – it’s just stuff on top of stuff on top of stuff, all the time at 120 miles an hour. It’s the type of film that seems to exist entirely to jingle keys in your face and make you point at the screen, going “I know that character! I recognize that sound effect! I’ve heard that music!”

What hurts the most though, coming from someone who grew up on Nintendo, is how supremely uninterested this film is in adapting the Super Mario Galaxy game. The viewer is drowned in a veritable barrage of references from other Mario games, but is never treated to any of the cinematic scale and wonder that the video game had in spades. Unique locales that game players got to explore have been replaced by scenes of zero consequence that drag on for far too long. Princess Rosalina, who is a central character and pillar of the original game’s story, has less dialogue and time to impact the plot than Glen Powell’s Fox McCloud – a character who isn’t even part of the Mario franchise!

It should be acknowledged that the film still holds a few merits – it’s very well animated and rendered, quite colorful, decently fun if you turn your brain off and the soundtrack is a joy to listen to if you’re a Nintendo fan. Past that point, it often feels like a baffling set of decisions where no suggestion that got thrown out was ever shot down. The intended audience is clear; if you’re a young child or a diehard Nintendo lover, you’ll probably get at least a little bit of enjoyment out of this. If you’re a cinephile or a parent being dragged by your children to the theater, this is an experience to steel yourself for, plaster on a smile and source most of your enjoyment from the happiness of your kids seeing their favorite characters on screen. 

Rated PG.