Looking at: Super Mario Bros.

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Don't ever Google search Puke at work.

There's been to much positivity on this blog of late. Rather odd, as I consider myself, and am considered, an angry individual. Hell, even Call of Duty managed to not piss me I decided today to turn that around. Today, we're looking at a movie that changed me, a movie that moved me. 

A movie that ruined my fucking life. 

It's a Blast!

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R.I.P

This was not Nintendo's first attempt at moving Mario into the world of multimedia. The Super Mario Brother's Super Show ran for about a year in 1989. The Zelda show, a spinoff of Super Show ran for thirteen episodes at this time too. There was a sequel of sorts in The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 in 1990, along with the Captain N. cartoon.

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"Well excuuuuuuuse me princess!" -an Asshole.

None of these are any good, but there's a certain charm to most of them that a lot of 80's and 90's cartoons tend to get. There was a certain reverence for their source material, like they wanted to be part of a non-existent cannon. To a certain degree all these shows succeeded with the Zelda show in particular influencing ideas that would appear in later games including Link owning a horse, and an unstated understanding to Link and Zelda's relationship that has yet to be properly explored in the games.

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Still waiting for the gritty reboot.

Most of all the shows were fun, made by people that seemed to really like what they were doing. Lou Albano and Danny Wells seem to have fun as Mario and Luigi, and their bumbling antics have a certain charm to them that's hard to deny, as long as you remember it was for kids.

Overall, the old shows weren't any good, and don't hold up for a second. But at least they're inoffensive and understand their source material.

This ain't no Game

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"It's a blast!" -an Asshole.

Super Mario Bros. (the movie. I won't be referencing the NES classic here) came out in 1993, but I didn't watch it till 1999, since I was only one in '93. I started playing video games when I was about five or six, so when I found an ad for a Mario Brothers movie in an old Archie comic I was ecstatic. I'd already seen The Wizard and thought "That was good, this HAS to be better".

Yes, I thought The Wizard was good, and I still think it's a fun kid's movie with a lot of early 90's charm.

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Pictured: A Goomba. 

Not Pictured: my tears.

Finding a copy of Mario Brothers was oddly hard, like the stoned teen running the video store knew that someone like me would want to watch it. Regardless, we eventually tracked a copy of Mario Brothers down, popped it into the VCR, grabbed a bowl of raisins and chocolate chips, and watched.

And we were mortified.

When I was seven I didn't think I'd ever become involved with the world of film making. All I knew was I had a crush on a girl in my class, candy was awesome, and Mario was the king of video games.

But I knew that was a bad fucking movie.

Everything was wrong with it. Where were the colorful, fun filled adventures of Mario and Luigi? Where was the regal Princess Peach, or even Princess Daisy? Where the hell was Yoshi? And why is that freaky looking bald guy calling himself Bowser? He's not Bowser, Bowser's a dinosaur. Where are the Koopas, Goombas, power mushrooms or fire flowers?

Where was my Super Mario Brothers?

I'm lucky to have never been molested in my life, but that movie definitely did something to me. My crush faded, replaced by a lack of love all together. Candy started tasting bittersweet, no matter how much I ate. And Mario?

Mario Sucked.


Live Action Thrill Ride

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These men are drunk as hell.

It took me fifteen years to watch this movie a second time. In that time I had gotten more into video games, learned what makes games good, and what makes them bad. More importantly, I went through three years of film school, learning all I could about the film making trade, giving me a more discerning eye when it came to watching movies.

Fifteen years later, and the Mario movie still sucks.

The most glaring issue is it's lack of basic understanding about... everything. While the series has rarely discussed any sort of cannon for the Mario Brothers, it's generally accepted that they were a pair of plumbers that wound up in the Mushroom Kingdom, and stomped, hammered, and jumped their way to rescuing the kingdom and saving the princess from the evil Koopa King Bowser. It's a well known plot that the games rarely deviate from.

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Dinohatten, worse then the real world New York.

Here we find the Brothers as dirt poor plumbers, barely able to pay rent. Hey kids! Your hero's are deadbeats! Luigi falls in love with a mysterious woman named Daisy, while Mario dates an aged whore. Both women are captured and taken into the sewers and the Brothers jump through an inter-dimensional wormhole to save them.

Ok, so far a little weird, but you can make it work.

They wind in a cyberpunk future world with sparks flying out of everywhere. The land is ruled by the evil dictator Bowser and all the people are evolved from dinosaurs. It's revealed that Daisy is actually a princess meant to rule this land, and she holds the key to uniting earth and this shitty earth together. Mario and Luigi, along with a character only referred to in the credits as Toad, confront Bowser, who reveals his de-evolution gun that devolves people back to their evolutionary base. Bowser turns Toad into a Goomba and the Brothers barely escape. From there they acquire super jump boots, forget they have super jump boots, kidnap a couple of idiots, and blow some stuff up. There's a twist when they find out that the fungus slowly covering the city is Daisy's long lost father, but that's dumb. There's a battle, references to the game, and a guy is transformed into a monkey.

This movie is so confused about what it should be about. Nothing looks like what it should, and it comes across as very scatterbrained and borderline psychotic.

Fuck you John Leguizamo

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Dennis Hopper, realizing where he is.

As for the cast? Bob Hopskins plays Mario, and does a serviceable job because Bob Hopskins was a decently good actor. He clearly didn't know what the hell he was working on, a fact backed up by this IMDB quote:

"Bob Hoskins didn't know that the film he was making was based on a game, until his son asked him what he was working on. When Hoskins mentioned the film's title, his son immediately recognized it and showed Hoskins the game on his own Nintendo."

Oh, that's a good sign, when your lead actor has no idea what he's acting in. Reportedly, Hopskins and Leguizamo hated the movie so much they were drunk for a good chunk of this. I can't blame everything on Hopskins, since for most of the movie his hand was in a cast. 


Good lord, a drunken cripple as the lead in a kids movie. Can it get worse?

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Samantha Mathis plays Daisy, doing an impression of every viewer of this film.

It can in the form of Dennis Hopper's Bowser. Hopper, like Hopskins, clearly has no idea what's going on. He just knows he's the bad guy, and rolls with that. He oozes sleaze, and there's a real uncomfortable feeling whenever he's on screen. Hopper has since, like most of the cast and crew, called it the worst movie he's ever done. 

Then there's John fucking Leguizamo. Leguizamo is in three of my least favorite movies (Mario, Pest, and The Happening), and as far as actors go he's down there with Dennis Quaid for my most hated. Between being drunk, being annoying, and having zero chemistry with anyone else on set, his version of Luigi is a far cry from the lovable looser we now have. His on screen performance is like watching a man beat a puppy to death in front of children, and should be lauded as a how not to act for a kid's movie. 

Down the Drain

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My review, the short version.

There's a host of other issues to, including the director's clear lack of experience, a borderline suicidal crew, and daily re-writes that were ignored. None of the characters are interesting, the set design is horrible, the lighting is off on every shot, and the music barely fits the mood. 

Most bad movies have at least something good to them. Movies like The Room or Manos are so bad they become funny, and act as guides on what not to do in film making. But Mario Brothers is just bad, an absolute bastardization of a beloved franchises. Like the hotel Mario games for the Philip's CDi, Nintendo refuses to acknowledge this film, and it remains a black spot on their reputation. 

Mario Brother's was the first movie based on a video game, and for some reason it wasn't the last. Maybe one day video games will produce a movie worth watching, with some hopeful contenders in the Ratchet and Clank movie, The Last of Us movie, and an unannounced possible Read Dead Redemption movie. Until then, we'll always have the Brothers, reminding us that maybe it's not always ok to Do the Mario.