Lots of Characters, No Stars

There are so many famous people in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, but good luck trying to recognize any of them. I didn’t realize Brie Larson played the new princess in distress, Rosalina, until I saw her name in the closing credits. If you told me Donald Glover spent more than an 90 minutes in a VO booth somewhere in Culver City to play Yoshi, I’d be shocked. Benny Safdie’s own brother wouldn’t be able to tell he was the guy behind Bowser Jr. — it could be just about anybody saying those lines with all the filters they shoved his voice through. Even Jack Black, one of the few performers who provided some pizzazz in the first Mario movie, spends a lot of the sequel as a miniaturized Bowser, his monstrous growl shifted into a tiny high-pitched squeak.

At least Black still seems like he’s engaged as Bowser; part of the reason the other performers are so anonymous is because they bring so little energy to their roles. Chris Pratt, who can be a witty voice actor, now has two credits as the most famous video game character in history on his resume with zero genuinely funny or memorable moments between them.

Look, I get it. It’s The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. It ain’t Miyazaki. People are coming to see stuff they know from other stuff; in this case 40 years of Super Mario Bros. games by Nintendo. And if that’s all you want out of this film — Nintendo Easter eggs and endless Mario Bros. power-ups and characters — you’ll get your money’s worth. But shouldn’t a movie, even The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, be a little more than that?

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Apparently not. To their credit, directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic and their animators do their damndest to ensure that the characters and locations and weapons all carry that signature Mario roly-poly look. Unlike the widely reviled (and later cult-reclaimed) live-action Super Mario Bros. of the early 1990s, Illumination’s Mario cartoons are like a Nintendo style guide brought to life. Several sequences in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie recreate the structure of vintage NES levels with the aesthetic of modern hyperkinetic computer animation. The result is less of a faithful adaptation of Super Mario Bros. 3 and more like what the first generation of NES gamers dreamed Super Mario Bros. 3 should look like as they hopped those pixelated plumbers around the blocky world of the old Mushroom Kingdom.

Okay, but … so what? The Super Mario Galaxy Movie borrows its name from a 2007 Wii game, but only utilizes the bare minimum of plot elements from it to instigate a manic 90-minute chase through the cosmos to save Larson’s Rosalina. After she gets kidnapped by Safdie’s Bowser Jr. in the film’s opening moments, her children, a brood of colorful sentient stars called “Lumas,” are left adrift in outer space. (Yes, the Lumas refer to Rosalina as their mom, and she calls them her kids, although I think she must have adopted them … at least I am skeptical she gave birth to dozens of shar-shaped creatures?)

After Rosalina’s capture, one of the Lumas escapes and recruits Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) to rescue her. That leaves the Mushroom Kingdom under the protection of Mario (Pratt), Luigi (Charlie Day, who, unlike Pratt, at least makes some attempt to sound like a stereotypical Italian guy from Brooklyn), and their new dinosaur pal Yoshi (Glover) who … just kind of shows up and immediately becomes part of their crew? I guess when you’re already friends with a talking mushroom (Keegan-Michael Key) a dinosaur that wears boots and can poop out whatever he eats as eggs is not particularly remarkable.

Every aspect of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’s is suffused with the same sort of eh whatever energy. Stuff just happens, and if you haven’t played every single Mario game over the last 40 years, and you aren’t quite sure why certain things are the way they are, that’s just your problem. The script by Matthew Fogel introduces tons of plot threads, then forgets to pay most of them off. The Luma who convinces Peach to rescue Rosalina, for example, just vanishes from the film after that.

Bower’s the worst offender in this regard. He starts off the film as a prisoner of Peach and Mario. Initially, he tries to make amends for his past actions, in the hopes that they will restore him to his proper size. Eventually he even starts to like Mario! But once Bowser Jr. shows up, Bowser pretty much goes back to being bad without a second thought. Ditto for his obsession with Peach from The Super Mario Bros. Movie. It continues into his introduction in Galaxy, where he gifts her a ludicrous painting of the two of them in a romance-novel-style embrace, then gets dropped for the rest of the movie.

At one point, Bowser claims he was a very bad dad who was never there for his son. But the one flashback to Bowser and Bowser Jr’s relationship prior to the events of the movie suggests Bowser was a genuinely caring and kind father? (At least as monstrous turtles who want to conquer the galaxy and enslave all princesses go.) The movie seems like it was designed so that the less attention you pay to what’s going on, the more you’ll enjoy it.

Maybe there’s just no time for things like “cohesive character development” or “a compelling story” when you’ve got to service as much Nintendo IP as humanly possible in barely 90 minutes before credits. Just about every major character from the first Mario movie except for Donkey Kong is back in Galaxy, and they added many more video game vets, including Wart from Super Mario Bros. 2 (voiced by Luis Guzmán), the Honey Queen (Issa Rae), and Glen Powell as Fox McCloud from Star Fox (and, I guess for international cinematic rights purposes, the Super Smash Bros. series). And those are just the characters and cameos included in the trailers and posters — there are lots more surprises sprinkled throughout the film.

Maybe too many! Even my extremely forgiving, Nintendo Switch-loving ten-year-old left The Super Mario Galaxy Movie screening asking “They put so many people in this one, who is even left to use in the next one?” My weary response back: “I’m sure they will find someone.” And odds are I won’t recognize their voices until the closing credits either.

Additional Thoughts:

-Bowser is definitely Bowser Jr.’s father. So who is Bowser Jr.’s mom? That topic is never addressed. Was there a Mrs. Bowser at some point? Do Bowsers asexually reproduce? These are the things a critic thinks about while waiting for a second post-credits scene of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.

RATING: 4/10