The Super Mario Galaxy Movie was wildly disappointing. The plot was way too convoluted for a children’s movie, the characters all seemed thrown in randomly, and there never was a clear goal that the characters were trying to work toward and accomplish.
Within the film, Mario (Chris Pratt) and his friends go into space to rescue Princess Rosalina (Brie Larson), the “Mother of the stars”, who has been kidnapped by Bowser Jr. (Benny Safdie) to power a universe destroying weapon. Joined by others, they travel across various planets to stop Bowser Jr. from his plans.
The movie started off with a nice flashy scene that had lots of promise. Yet the rest of the movie was spent hopping between unrelated sidequests that make the whole thing feel very clunky.
The actual motivations for Mario, Luigi (Charlie Day), and Yoshi (Donald Glover) are barely explained, which once again made the movie feel clunky. Rosalina was hyped up only to not be relevant for the entire movie.
The whole time in the theater all viewers can think about was why would the characters do that? What’s Bowser’s relationship to his son? How does this all relate to the bigger goal? Yet all questions were left unanswered.
There were some scenes that seemed to drag out forever, while others (like when Princess Rosalina meets Bowser Jr.) seemed incredibly rushed. It makes no sense to essentially skip over the important parts in a movie and focus on the unimportant parts.
Despite the negatives, visually, the movie is beautiful. The entire film is immersed in color and things that feel weirdly lifelike yet distinctly cartoonish. The studio did a great job of making it feel as if you were in the Super Mario universe.
There’s clearly a lot of time and money poured into making it look the best it could yet one can wish that they invested some of that money into writers and story artists, not just animation.
On top of the visuals, the world design and characters really stood out. The cute and cuddly little Lumas and the cold blooded Fox McCloud (Glen Powell) really added some soul into the otherwise soulless movie.
Above all, the one thing that truly made this movie terrible was the fact that Mario and Luigi became supporting characters in their own film. It’s understandable that the creators wanted to bring in more characters, making them important as well. Yet, there shouldn’t come a point where the characters the movie’s named after feel like unimportant sidepieces.
The movie felt like it almost could have been better with less characters. Fox McCloud and Yoshi feel like they’re there only because Nintendo felt they needed to add some more beloved characters.
All in all it’s a solid movie if you’re looking for background music, but it offers very little if you want to watch something entertaining with substance. It lacks depth, a decent plot, and good characters. It’s an absolute waste of an hour and a half.
