Review: The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a madcap love letter to fans

Enlarge / Me-ow. (credit: Nintendo; Illumination Entertainment & Universal Pictures)

I’ve been waiting three decades for Hollywood to make a film that could wash away my disappointing memories of seeing the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie in theaters on opening weekend.

Yes, I know that famously messy production has now become something of a cult classic among people who are now nostalgic for its uniquely ’90s vibe. But I’m still not completely recovered from my experience as a 10-year-old Mario superfan who was crushed to see a completely unrecognizable version of Mario on the silver screen. Rather than a loving homage to the world of my favorite video game, that younger version of me got an unrelated gonzo steampunk fever dream with the barest sprinkling of Mario references layered on top.

If anything, Illumination’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie has the opposite problem. This film version captures all the fun and vibrancy of the Mario games, with enough references to familiar characters, items, and locations to make even a die-hard Mario fan’s head spin. But the movie is so maniacally focused on squeezing in so many of those references at a madcap pace that the film comes off as unfocused, cluttered, and nearly incomprehensible from a story perspective.