The Super Mario Bros Movie. The movie that everybody who is anybody has been anticipating finally released to theaters on April 5 and there are already plenty of mixed opinions from both critics and common movie watchers alike. Announced in September 2021, the movie aimed to break the curse of bad on-screen Mario Bros adaptations. With a promising initial trailer and a stacked cast to voice the characters including Jack Black as Bowser, Chris Pratt as Mario, and Anya Taylor-Joy as Peach, it actually seemed like some decent money was put towards the movie’s production. 

   Knowing of the potential the movie had, I decided to watch it myself and see if it would live up to the mediocre expectations I had set for it. I can easily say that it surpassed my expectations by miles.

   Going into the movie I assumed it’d just be a quick cash grab with a few mediocre jokes but I quickly found out this wasn’t the case. Right off the bat it was easy to tell that there was lots of time put into incorporating tons of small details into the movie. There were plenty of callbacks to classic Nintendo games and the soundtrack for the movie consisted of altered versions of the Super Mario games’ music which was a very nice subtle touch. 

   Fennville Sr. Yami Osorio said “I thought the movie was great because growing up playing Mario games I was happy to see hints of the games incorporated into the movie.” 

   I also found the movie to be a lot funnier than I expected it to be. There were a few misses but overall, many of the jokes landed very well, one of which was how Bowser, the main villain of the movie, was madly in love with Peach, one of the protagonists. I thought that the bit that was done with Bowser would get old pretty quickly but I was surprised to see how they kept it fresh and funny every time they did it. One of these bits involved Bowser making his own love song towards the princess which has now gained massive popularity on Tiktok. 

   Looking at the movie critically, there were a few areas where it did fall short. The main area that the movie lacked in was voice acting. Despite the great cast, it felt like there wasn’t much actual voice acting going on. It felt more like the studio had just slapped a random celebrity’s voice onto each character to have some big names attached to the movie. For example, Toad’s voice sounded like a regular guy instead of his iconic louder and raspier voice. 

   Currently The Super Mario Bros Movie is sitting at 57% on Rotten Tomatoes from the critics while boasting an impressive 96% score from the audience. For this movie, I’m definitely on the audience’s side. The movie felt fun, energetic, and most important of all enjoyable. I think people can talk as much as they want about the simplistic and predictable story but in the end the movie is a very enjoyable homage to the old classic.