I tried. I really did. After very much disliking 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie, I went into its sequel, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, hoping beyond hope that things would improve. I’m a huge Nintendo fan and have been for almost half a century. This didn’t have to be perfect. It just had to find a balance between an emotional, captivating story to go along with all the Nintendo madness, something the first film didn’t do, and many other animated films have done. But when Mario and Luigi got turned into babies and were riding Yoshi with Toad, holding a Super Scope, being chased by a T-Rex over a bridge of bones, I realized nothing had changed. In fact, things may have gotten worse.
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is a nonstop barrage of stuff with no meaningful connection or cohesion. Oh sure, there’s a story. But it’s such a thin story that the gaps are filled with characters flying, jumping, or falling into new areas where they meet new characters, who then start flying, jumping, or falling around too. Every frame is filled with little visual flairs and Easter eggs that mean nothing. And the veiled attempts at giving the film a heart are laughable. In the end, though, the biggest problem might be that Mario and Luigi become supporting characters in their own movie, achieving little and learning less.
The story of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is that Bowser Jr. (Benny Safdie), the son of Bowser (Jack Black), kidnaps the powerful Princess Rosalina (Brie Larson) in an attempt to find and rescue his father. Rosalina’s stars then recruit Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) and Toad (Keegan Michael Key) to save her. But Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) get worried and go after her too, with the help of their new friend Yoshi (Donald Glover) and Bowser, who was captured at the end of the last film.
Bowser Jr. kidnapping Rosalina is the first sign the movie hasn’t learned anything from the last go around. We don’t know either of these characters. There’s no setup. Sure, Nintendo fans might know them. And having seen the last movie, we can pretty easily discern that one is somehow related to the evil Bowser, and the other looks oddly similar to the heroic Peach. But beyond that, there’s no effort to catch the audience up. So from the very first scene, we’re given a big action moment with little to no discernible stakes or interest.
From there, we find Mario and Luigi riding dirtbikes across the desert. Is it cool? Absolutely. Mario even does his little “Wahoo” when he does a jump. But does it add anything? Not in the slightest. Does it come back and pay off in some kind of interesting way? Not really.
And that’s how the whole film goes. Characters, places, and scenes are in there for no other reason than to pad the film out. Take Yoshi, for example. Of course, he’s adorable and mischievous. But he’s seemingly in the film only to be adorable and mischievous. There’s no important reason for him to be there. No big payoff. He’s just the next obvious character to add to the mix, having been teased in the previous film.
Later, Fox McCloud from Star Fox is introduced. And, as voiced by Glen Powell, he gets an appropriately fun introduction and surface-level role to play in the story. But does he need to be there? Is introducing this famous Nintendo character in any way additive outside of “Oh, look, that’s Glen Powell as the dude from Star Fox“? Not at all.
Mario and Luigi go through the film similarly. They’re following Peach and Toad the entire time, hanging with Yoshi, whom they adopt way too easily, and constantly reacting instead of acting. The film is named after them, and yet, they’re only there to support the story after the fact. They’re just flying through the movie by the seat of their pants with little to no reason behind it.
But, ultimately, that’s what these movies are. They’re a grab bag of stuff for adults to put on an iPad to distract the kids while they eat at a restaurant. Which is fine! If you liked the first movie, you’ll probably like this one. The movie is loud and bright and, unsurprisingly, quite beautiful. But it’s vapid and maddening in terms of enjoyment or engagement outside of the most basic, surface-level things.
That becomes especially obvious when the film attempts to dive two inches below the surface. That first comes with the relationship between Bowser and Bowser Jr. We don’t know the dynamic between these two, but the characters sit there and talk about it for about three minutes as awkwardly as you can imagine before jumping back into the action. The same goes for the mysterious connection between Peach and Rosalina. It’s set up, quickly explained, but never discussed or enriched beyond that. Both instances feel like the filmmakers are forcing emotion into the film just to say it’s in there. They even completely wipe one of those away near the end, in frustrating fashion.
And yet, there are moments peppered throughout The Super Mario Galaxy Movie that really work. An early Yoshi montage is told with some hilarious flair. An exciting action scene near the end beautifully captures the dynamics of the video games. And I’d be lying if I didn’t geek out a bit about some of the old-school Nintendo references in there, like R.O.B. the Robot, Kung Fu, Pro Wrestling, Excitebike, and the aforementioned Super Scope. They might not add anything, but they still brought a smile to my face.
That smile, however, eventually faded. Mario and Luigi find their power-ups, save the day, and the film ends so abruptly that it’ll make your head spin. It’s almost as if it was easier to roll the credits instead of having the characters have any meaningful interaction or wrap up. Or, that there really wasn’t much to interact about or wrap up at all. Such is the way of things with The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. It’s not here to make you feel anything. It barely dabbles in nostalgia. It’s a movie made to assault your senses for 90 minutes, and it does that with a vengeance. We just wish it did anything else, too.
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is in theaters on April 1.
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