The common complaint among most critics with the first Super Mario Bros. Movie was that it was superficial fan service that was pretty to look at with no depth, but kids would probably like it. Based on the blurbs and whatnot I’ve read about The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, you can just copy and paste everything that was written about the first film and apply it to this one. I agree with this general take, but the most important part of the critique is that kids will probably like it.
Before I had children of my own, I would only watch the yearly Pixar movie, if that, when it came to animation. I wasn’t interested in it, and my opinions about such films didn’t matter. Now that I have three kids that I can take to the theater, I’ve certainly watched a lot more animated movies, but I still find reviewing most of them pointless. I’m making an exception with Mario Galaxy because of that common complaint of it lacking heart, or depth, or a message, or whatever Pixar adds to all their movies. Yes, this movie is all surface, and that’s why I like it. Well, that’s one of the reasons I like it.
Animated movies with complex messages for a young audience are great and important, and I like them just fine. But I also appreciate it when a movie can just be a movie. It’s why I enjoy plenty of the critical darling films, but I find even more enjoyment in a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. Sometimes it’s nice to shut my brain off and watch some trash, and I like that my kids have that option, too.
The makers of Super Mario Galaxy clearly feel this way, as well. Yes, there is a plot involving a kidnapped princess and Bowser and all that. But this is really just patched together moments, characters, and locales from everything Nintendo has made in the last forty years. My two old children both looked at me when the desert setting from Super Mario Odyssey was used in a scene. They were just happy to recognize something from a game they played. And so was I.
If this series was about a franchise or company that I was not into or unaware of, I might not watch it all, and if I did I probably wouldn’t enjoy it very much. But I’ve been playing Nintendo games since I can remember, so, like my kids, I was just happy to see stuff I recognized, even if it wasn’t inspired. For instance, my favorite part involves R.O.B., the gimmicky robot Nintendo released in the NES days. The joke of the character is that it is very slow in telling characters where to go, but this is just a ripoff of a very similar joke with the sloth in Zootopia (and it’s not like that was a brilliant joke to begin with). But it was R.O.B. so I found it funny. There are dozens of examples like that depending on your experience with Nintendo through the years.
This was the case with the first film, as well. Because of this, I didn’t plan on writing anything about this movie. What was the point? This is going to make money no matter what. I can’t imagine there’s a single person waiting for the reviews to come in to decide whether to watch this. What made this movie unique for me was that it was the first movie my three-year-old daughter was able to sit through all the way through (we tried Moana 2 a while back, but she only made it through half of it), minus one bathroom break (more on that later).
Movies have been a barometer for me with my kids for their entire lives. It’s a milestone to sit through an entire animated movie, then move on to some live action, then get to the point in which they’re telling me movies they want to see. I use their attention spans for these movies as evidence that screen time is not destroying their brains as much as I feared. Sure, the younger ones fidget around a bit more and want to switch seats and whatnot, but for the most part the movie holds their attention. My youngest doesn’t get any of the videogame references, but the characters have permeated culture so much that she recognizes most of them anyway, and princesses in general are a big deal to her right now, so that helped. She even broke into applause when Princess Peach took off flying midway through the film.
It was the bathroom break that made the night, though. She had been asking to go to the bathroom early on, but I kept telling her to wait. My wife had to give in and take her when she loudly announced, “I need to pee!” right after a lull in the action after a loud T. Rex scene (the T. Rex from Super Mario Odyssey, of course). Her loud proclamation got a bigger laugh from the audience than anything in the movie itself.
What else could I hope for from a kids’ movie? Afterwards, all the kids simply claimed the whole movie was their favorite part (which I think they just say so we’ll stop asking them questions). They were excited by the mid and post-credits scenes. And I didn’t need to explain any deeper concepts to them afterwards about grief or death or whatever. Just a decent night at the movies with a memorable moment from my youngest child. Sometimes that’s all you need from a kids’ movie.
Random Thoughts (SPOILERS [ha ha!])
My oldest daughter was a little mad once I showed her the post-credits scene with the appearance of Daisy. She thought Daisy should have been in the entire movie.
I was a little disappointed that the Kongs weren’t really involved. But good for them for showing a little restraint, I guess. Or more likely not wanting to pay Seth Rogen.
I loved all the Super Mario Bros. 2 stuff. This and Mr. Game & Watch are the kind of shit that make me forgive the shallowness of it all. I never imagined Wart having Luis Guzman’s voice, but it’s canon now, so Guzman it is.
Nice of them to find a way to show some of the action in the old NES style.
So how does that roller coaster on the Bowser planet work? Koopas go on normal and come out as dry boneses? (Is that the plural of dry bones?) So it kills them? They don’t seem to mind, though it’s hard to tell if they’re screaming with joy or terror. Are they warned about this before getting on? Is it only for Koopas? I have so many questions, and the filmmakers definitely never had a single one.
Galaxy is one of the few main Mario titles that I never played, so there are quite a few characters and references I didn’t recognize at all.
As for the voice acting, I’m still down with Day as Luigi, and I’ve accepted Pratt as Mario. Benny Safdie as Bowser, Jr. is wild, and I never would have guessed that was the actor if you gave me a thousand tries. And Donald Glover as Yoshi? It’s cool that these guys want to do this, but it sure is a waste of their talent. Glen Powell is spot-on as Starfox (he’ll always just be Starfox to me just like Grogu is Baby Yoda).
Finally, this is one that I won’t mind the kids asking to watch when it comes out on streaming because I’m sure I missed about a thousand references.