With the news of the upcoming Chris Pratt Mario movie, I think it’s time we take a stroll through the most notorious trainwreck of all video game movie adaptions. Forget about ugly sonic. Forget about the Prince of Persia (actually, I’m certain most people already have). No, when it comes to bad videogame movies, one towers above the rest.
Friends and followers, I give you: Super Mario Bros. 1993.
And you know what? It wasn’t as bad as I remember it. Trust me, I’m as shocked by this as you are.
For those who haven’t seen the film, just forget about the video games. There’s already a million articles picking over the source material inconsistencies, so let’s just say this is a grungy 90s sci-fi flick with a few easter egg references to a certain Nintendo series featuring plumbers.
Roughly summarised, the film follows two Brooklyn plumbers as they chase a pair of kidnappers into an alternate dimension, one where evolved human-like dinosaurs live in a world with barely any resources and everyone shops at Hot Topic. In a collapsing city ruled by an ambitious warlord and slowly being subsumed by a semi-sentient fungus, our heroes must break into the castle skyscraper, save the princess, and stop the invasion of earth.
Now apart from the bastardisation of the source material, this film gets a lot of flak for the production values. The film reportedly cost almost $50 million, but the sets and costumes look like something from a Hercules or Xena-level 90s sitcom. No, that’s aiming too high. Think Andromeda or first season Babylon 5 (forgive me Straczynski, I adore your writing). The lighting is awful, making everything flat and overexposed, and the sound quality varies wildly from scene to scene.
Writing wise, there’s a lot to criticise. The plot is filled with setups that go nowhere, like Bowser getting zapped by his own de-evolution device early on and slowly regressing into a dinosaur… then getting zapped by a DIFFERENT de-evolution gun at the finale to get turned instantly into a dino and then into primordial goo. There’s also plenty of action scenes, all performed with slapstick humour, but the pacing is so wild that some scenes drag on while others are over before any tension can even be built up. The finale is all over the place, it’s just a long succession of visually weird things happening until Bowser dies. The biggest sin here is that while the titular Mario Bros are given different personalities to bounce off each other, there’s barely any character development, apart from the blue-collar practical Mario learning to take a chance and believe during the final battle.
That all said, some parts of this film… weren’t actually that bad? The film’s setup feels like it was written by a different person. 12 minutes in, and the audience has a clear idea of what the major plot is (mostly a search for a crystal made of MaGuffinium), what the stakes are, and the major character relationships. I like the fact that the Super Mario Brothers themselves genuinely care and stick up for each other. In both these points, this film is doing better than some of the classic films I’ve reviewed. While many of the story elements misfire, they are surprisingly well introduced, rising organically from events and character interactions. The story is, for the most part, a lot of fun, and delivered with a pantomime wink.
What did my girls think? As you know by now, they get a vote in these reviews. They really enjoyed the film, although it took some explaining as to why the princess’s Mushroom Kingdom now looked like something from Mad Max…
In the end, Super Mario Bros. is undoubtedly a trainwreck, but it’s also a fun film with some hidden potential. Join me next week – in honour of spooky season I will be sinking my fangs into some 90s horror. See you then!
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