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The Super Mario Bros. Movie Review: For Better or Worse, a Faithful Video Game Movie

On the eve of its 30th birthday, Super Mario Bros .––the 1993 film, not the groundbreaking video game––might be due for critical reappraisal. Dubbed “ a complete waste of time and money ” by Roger Ebert, rejected by Mario’s custodians at Nintendo, and described with utter contempt by its own stars , it has enjoyed three decades of cultural life as a punchline about the dismal standards of game-to-movie adaptations. Yet the tonally confused kids’ movie, viewed in retrospect of a fully Marvelized Hollywood, recalls a time when genuinely weird , mutant art could sometimes break out of the franchise-blockbuster laboratories. Directed by Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, the spousal duo behind cult cyberpunk sensation Max Headroom , it liberally reimagines the vaguely defined Mario lore of plumbers, princesses, mushrooms, and dinosaurs into a gothic urban fever dream. Pursuing a kidnapped girl, the titular brothers––Bob Hoskins as Mario, adopting a wheezing, gesticulating meatball man persona several years before James Gandolfini would elevate the type; and John Leguizamo’s Luigi, looking perpetually baffled by everything around him––fall through an underground portal from real-world Brooklyn into a dystopian funhouse-mirror Manhattan populated by evolved human-dinosaur hybrids and a citywide infestation of sentient fungus. A massive practical set characterized by glaring neon, grotesque mutants, claustrophobic metal structures, and dozens of extras decked out in futuristic kitsch, Super Mario Bros’ subterranean otherworld can easily rank with its cinematic contemporaries in urban dystopia, from Total Recall and Strange Days to Demolition Man and Johnny Mnemonic , all cult classics in their own right. Dennis Hopper, as a vision of the dastardly King Koopa bearing more than a passing resemblance to a certain megalomaniacal Manhattan real-estate mogul, dons slicked-back hair and a cheap tux to bark about “goombas” and space rocks to henchmen with human bodies and shrunken reptilian heads. The script, shuffled between four different writers before getting a polish treatment from elite scribe Ed Solomon , is so bereft of focus or tonal coherence that the film becomes a wholly unpredictable smorgasbord of gags, plot points, and setpieces with a jittery, relentless energy and an acute sense of camp (when Koopa forcibly “evolves” his slapstick henchman duo, Flowers for Algernon -style, they become Marxist intellectuals and rebel). Super Mario Bros. is children’s entertainment seemingly determined to confuse and terrify children, and it is never quite possible at any point in its 100-or-so minutes to accurately predict what rabbit hole it might leap through another five minutes down the road. It is not, compared with all but a few of its contemporary equivalents, a conventional movie.

No matter. Super Mario Bros. (the movie) bombed at the box office to the tune of eight-figure losses, and this, more than anything else, cemented its reputation as a radioactive object. In its wake Nintendo turned fiercely defensive of its IP––this disaster had come about from entrusting Mario to unsupervised foreigners, the logic held, and that would never happen again. Nintendo fans, who are nothing if not a loyal bunch, bemoaned that Super Mario Bros’ dark sci-fi flavoring strayed too far from its bright, colorful source material. Nintendo evidently took their concerns to heart. When the famously image-conscious company announced in 2018 that a new animated Mario adaptation was in development––through their own media channels, not those of studio partner Universal––they took great care to note that the project would be produced and directly supervised by Mario’s own creator, game design godfather, and notorious perfectionist Shigeru Miyamoto. 

The Mario games under Miyamoto’s strict oversight have always been narratively minimal, but crucially still narrative . Mario’s early 1980s escapades were in fact among the very first video games to contextualize the abstractions of game-design language with rudimentary forms of narrative: even iconic mascot Pac-Man, to the degree that we can glean anything about his motives, simply consumes pellets and ghosts like an animal, as an unconscious function of his being in the time he spends staving off death; Mario is a human man, implicitly one with an entire life and profession outside of jumping on or over things, whose quest to save a girl borrows accessible tropes from cultural touchstones like King Kong , Alice in Wonderland , and the lore of St. George the dragon-slayer. Yet where rival mascot-driven game franchises like Sonic the Hedgehog and rival game designers like Hideo Kojima have eagerly pursued the melding of games and traditional media with every new expansion of gaming technology, Miyamoto has always held firm on the separation of games and narrative art, even to the point of actively working against colleagues’ attempts to insert a heavier narrative presence into Mario’s world. Tellingly, Miyamoto had this to say about the failure of Mario ‘93, when interviewed in 2007: “…the movie may have tried to get a little too close to what the Mario Bros. videogames were. And in that sense, it became a movie that was about a videogame, rather than being an entertaining movie in and of itself.”

The Super Mario Bros. Movie ––yes, that is its official name––would be undefinable without reference to its video game origins. It starts out not so dissimilar to the ‘93 film: brothers Mario and Luigi (now voiced by Chris Pratt and Charlie Day, respectively) are bumbling plumbers in Brooklyn who one day tumble through an interdimensional sewer pipe and end up in the otherworldly Mushroom Kingdom, a land under siege by the dastardly Bowser (the lizard formerly known as King Koopa, now portrayed by Jack Black). Of course, rather than being filmed on grimy New Yorkish sets, this is all animated with sparkling texture and clarity by the French-American millionaires at Illumination Entertainment, home of the Minions merchandising empire. The CG spectacle is as technically advanced as anything from Disney: complex light glows and refracts off of fire and ice; the plumbers’ cartoon mustaches are textured down to the hairs; water is fluid and smooth enough to make video game reviewers swoon, while character animations follow suit. As in directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic’s Teen Titans GO! , its pacing is manic and heavily catered to the attention-deficit, and its audience-winking gags are constant––sometimes even amusing. (Black, along with Keegan-Michael Key as Peach’s loyal retainer Toad, clearly gets to have the most fun goofing around rather than trying to sell dialogue about power-ups.)

After briefly establishing human emotional stakes — Mario’s dream plumbing business is floundering, and his plain-spoken Italian pa doesn’t believe in him; Luigi is a sheepish tagalong languishing in his brother’s shadow — it’s when the brothers are separated and Mario meets Princess Peach, human monarch of the Mushroom Kingdom’s humanoid mushrooms (Anya Taylor-Joy, in a girlboss role decidedly “punched up” from the classic demure damsel), that the film signifies its true faithfulness to the games: namely, by tossing its paper-thin pretense of plot to the wind in favor of a parade of nonsensical setpieces, all of which conveniently show off the design language and iconography of the source material. From floating blocks to koopa shells to fireball wheels, Mario encounters characters, enemies, and objects from the games in such rapid, colorful succession that many pass by in montages, all scored to a combination of iconic theme music from four decades of Mario games and insipid pop ditties in Illumination’s playlist. A few odd attempts to inject pathos into a script based on traditionally near-mute characters (Mario’s frenemy Donkey Kong, voiced by and visually modeled after Seth Rogen, now has daddy issues) are underdeveloped and quickly forgotten in the compulsory barrage of action and references. Self-effacing gags of the kind standard to the modern American kids’ cartoon both keep parents in their seats with a steady series of winks and preclude Super Mario Bros. from ever reaching for anything sincere. Not that the material provides much to reach for: there’s no story here that didn’t exist on the Nintendo Entertainment System 38 years ago, nor even gonzo worldbuilding like the ‘93 film; only setpieces, technically marvelous but literally and figuratively weightless, which is certainly faithful to the source material in a sense but not the strongest argument for its application to cinema. What works in the games as pretense for abstract exercises in the joy of pure movement and imaginary architecture becomes inscrutable nonsense.

Its “faithfulness,” that is to say, points conspicuously to what made Nintendo and Miyamoto change their tune on multimedia crossovers after so many years of abstention. To paraphrase the master’s delicate wording in a more recent interview : it’s good for game sales. There are two obvious target demographics here: primarily children who will be delighted by the noise and motion and physical comedy; secondarily, nostalgia-stricken adults who will watch and / or create hours of YouTube videos about the film’s bounty of easter eggs referencing Nintendo lore and history. (Here’s where I will reveal I’m not too cool to be a part of the Super Mario Bros. audience: on top of its endless game and console references, I recognized cameos from Punch-Out!! , Wrecking Crew , F-Zero , Balloon Fight , Kid Icarus , and Nintendo’s Japan-only “Disk-kun” Famicom mascot , not to mention every quoted musical motif and the individual Mario and / or Donkey Kong game it came from. Did I have fun picking this cynical trail of fanboy breadcrumbs up out of the background in virtually every frame? Your honor—I plead the fifth.) 

Eager to signal its hip self-awareness, Super Mario Bros. blithely acknowledges and then does nothing with the fact that the arcane rules and pocket logics which make Mario games an ingenious jumping-themed gauntlet of obstacle courses and playgrounds––floating platforms and glowing question mark blocks and such––become arbitrary nonsense when filtered through the sensibilities of any other medium. One scene has Princess Peach explaining the concept of power-ups to Mario––they make you stronger when you consume them, but if you get hit by an enemy or obstacle you lose them. She literally calls them “power-ups.” The purpose of including this scene, of reproducing the absurd logic of Mario mushrooms exactly in a narrative film, seems to be less for its benefit than to give uninitiated audiences a helpful primer on the video game rules. Likewise, an extended sequence of go-kart battling on the notorious Rainbow Road seems to be included primarily to remind audiences that Mario Kart is a fun, popular game you can purchase today. And maybe you should: The Super Mario Bros. Movie isn’t an actively unpleasant way to spend an afternoon, but the glib literalism with which it applies cinematic narrative to video games’ abstractions can’t hold a candle to the wrenching pathos and self-discovery of a night on the track with real-life loved ones and Mario in his original medium. These things are what real art is about, I’m told.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is now in theaters.

Sony’s “Astro Bot” is a Joyous Gaming Experience

The incredibly clever platformer “Astro Bot” is designed with one intention: To make you smile. In an era in which even the best games can seem addictively cruel (“ Elden Ring ”) or thematically brutal (“ The Last of Us ”), there’s something so satisfying about a game that goes back to the basic function of providing pure, joyous entertainment. Building off the clever “Astro’s Playroom” to give gamers a much richer, more complex gaming experience, “Astro Bot” is a wonderful launch to the Fall video game season. We’ll get back to the dark stuff soon in titles like “Silent Hill 2” and “Assassin’s Creed: Shadows”—let’s just have some fun for now.

“Astro’s Playroom” was essentially an extended showcase for the PS5’s graphical capabilities. The rare modern console that came with a video game, Sony used “Playroom” to show off the new controller for the system, including mechanics that highlighted its varied functionality. Whether you were tilting the controller on a space mission or even blowing into the mic to complete a mission, “Playroom” showed the console’s potential in a way that developers arguably haven’t lived up to since. Playing “Astro Bot,” it’s easy to remember that most games still use the controller in a basic, old-fashioned way.

Once again, you play as Astro, a robot sent on a series of missions to retrieve parts of the PS5 mothership that have been spread across the galaxy. On each level, you’ll search for ‘bots’, cute little guys and gals that often nod to other Sony characters like Kratos from “God of War” or Joel from “The Last of Us.” Like the first game, “Astro Bot” pays homage to beloved Sony exclusives like those two games, “Ratchet & Clank,” “Jak & Daxter,” “The Ghost of Tsushima,” “Horizon: Zero Dawn,” and much more. Playing platformer levels built around these beloved games is an absolute blast. I only wished for more Astro Versions of modern classics. (Maybe in what feels like an inevitable sequel.)

That said, the levels without direct connections work on their own terms. Astro is constantly learning new tricks to complete levels and find bots, whether they’re monkey arms that allow him to reach higher, or a mechanic that allows him to freeze time, and so on. The expansion of “Astro Bot” as you open new worlds and learn new techniques keeps it feeling fresh. I raced through the game in about seven hours, but I still have dozens of bots to find, and entirely hidden levels that can be opened in something called a “Lost Galaxy.” There is also reportedly DLC coming soon. It’s a lot more game than “Playroom” in every way.

It also looks and sounds fantastic. Platformers often struggle with physics and depth, essential elements when trying to land a jump or hit an enemy. But everything about “Astro Bot” feels smooth and organic. The levels are ambitiously designed from jungle settings to beaches to a snowy tundra. From its simple beginning through to its incredibly fun final level, “Astro Bot” feels like it’s constantly reinventing itself, staying fresh in ways that platformers rarely do.

“Astro Bot” reminded me how much I still love platformers. Growing up in the ‘80s, I’m a child of Mario—I can still remember the first time I played “Super Mario Bros.” at a friend’s house and went home dreaming about it. Every now and then, a platformer pops up on the landscape to remind me of the reason I fell in love with games in the first place: the perfection of “Super Mario Odyssey” or the creative splendor of “Rayman Origins.” “Astro Bot” deserves mention with those games. Now, if you’ll excuse me—I have more bots to rescue.

The Publisher provided a review copy of this title.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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‘the super mario bros. movie’ review: zippy animated version breathes new life into beloved video game.

Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key and Seth Rogen are among stars providing the voices for this new screen adaptation of the iconic Nintendo franchise.

By Frank Scheck

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Jack black takes jason momoa and danielle brooks under his wing in 'a minecraft movie' teaser, jack black, paul rudd circling reimagining of horror movie 'anaconda', the super mario bros. movie.

After an amusing slapstick episode involving a routine plumbing job turned into a catastrophe by an aggressive pooch, the brothers take it upon themselves to attempt to fix a broken water main underneath the Brooklyn streets. When Luigi falls down a mysterious pipe and disappears, Mario dives in after him and finds himself in the magical Mushroom Kingdom. With the aid of the upbeat Toad (Keegan Michael-Key), the first resident he encounters, Mario embarks on a mission to rescue his brother from the clutches of the evil Bowser ( Jack Black ), the ferocious turtle leader of the Koopas, who is intent on conquering the Mushroom Kingdom.

The film features one jam-packed sequence after another, one highlight being Mario’s titanic battle with Donkey Kong ( Seth Rogen , sounding exactly like himself but still hilarious), in which his determination and resourcefulness become fully apparent. The fast-paced action effectively approximates the gaming experience; Brian Tyler’s equally frenetic soundtrack cleverly riffs on the game’s musical themes by composer Koji Kando, providing suitable accompaniment.

The plot is as basic as can be, and character development is clearly not a priority. Considering Day’s terrific voice work as Luigi, it seems a shame that the character disappears for such long stretches. But directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, creators of the Teen Titans Go! series, deliver a reasonably faithful big screen adaptation that, while it features plenty of juvenile humor, wisely doesn’t lean toward broad satire.

Fans will be delighted by the many Easter eggs liberally scattered throughout the proceedings — I’m sure I missed the vast majority of them, but there were plenty of appreciative laughs and cheers at the press screening — including the vocal cameos by original Mario voice performer Martinet and other game veterans.

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The Super Mario Bros. Movie

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Watch The Super Mario Bros. Movie with a subscription on Netflix, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

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While it's nowhere near as thrilling as turtle tipping your way to 128 lives, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a colorful -- albeit thinly plotted -- animated adventure that has about as many Nintendos as Nintendon'ts.

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‘Super Mario Bros. Movie' review: A fun but safe Mushroom Kingdom romp

Nintendo takes no risks..

Super Mario Bros. is an almost perfect kids film. It's stunningly animated, it has enough momentum to keep youngins from being bored, and almost every character is unique and likable (even Bowser himself, thanks to the comedic stylings of Jack Black). It's clear that Nintendo didn't want to repeat the mistakes of that other Mario movie, the live-action 1993 film that's ironically beloved by some '90s kids (it's all we had!), but ultimately failed to capture the magic of the games. This film, meanwhile, is chock full of everything you'd remember from Nintendo's ouvre. It's a nostalgic romp for adults, and it's simply a fun time for children.

But boy is it safe. Maybe I'm a bit spoiled by the excellent non-Pixar animated films we've seen over the last decade, especially the ones that Phil Lord and Chris Miller have touched ( The Lego Movie! Into the Spider-Verse!) . But it's glaringly obvious Nintendo didn't want to take any major creative risks with this adaptation. The script from Matthew Fogel is filled with enough humor and references to keep us from feeling bored, and directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic deliver some inspired sequences. But it's almost like the film is trapped in a nostalgia castle thanks to the whims of an aging corporate dinosaur. (Bear with me.)

That wasn't a problem for the kids in my matinee audience, but it's a bit disappointing if you've waited decades to see a truly great Mario adaptation. It's in line with the recent live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movie — Super Mario Bros. is "fine." There's no attempt to achieve anything deeper than the basics: Mario (voiced by Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) are two floundering Brooklyn plumbers who are inexplicably transported to the Mushroom Kingdom. Luigi, ever the scaredy-cat, is almost instantly captured by Bowser's minions, and it's up to Mario and Princess Peach (an effervescent Anya Taylor-Joy) to save him. Big bad Bowser, meanwhile, has plans to either marry Peach or, barring that, take over the kingdom.

The film bombards you with an endless series of references from the start – just look at all those Punch-Out! characters on the wall! – something that will either delight longtime Nintendo fans or make your eyes roll. Personally, though, I mostly enjoyed seeing how all of the nostalgia fodder was deployed (the adorably fatalistic Lumalee from Mario Galaxy practically steals the film). The filmmakers also show off plenty of visual flair, like an early scene in Brooklyn that rotates into a 2D chase sequence. If only some of the musical choices were more creative. (A Kill Bill reference? Bonnie Tyler's "Holding Out for a Hero" during Mario's training montage? Come on .)

It's always nice to see kids movies reach far beyond our expectations — The Lego Movie wrestled with the prison of capitalism, the importance of pushing against restrictive social expectations and how fandom can ruin the thing you actually love, all in addition to being a fun adventure for kids and injecting a dose of smart humor for adults. In Super Marios Bros., Mario learns to eat mushrooms because they literally make him big and strong. What subtext!

At the same time, I can still respect a movie that simply accomplishes its goal of entertaining children. Over the years, I've been subjected to plenty of truly awful kid's films with ugly animation and production design, lazy writing, and zero creative vision. I wish I could reclaim the time I spent watching Space Jam: A New Legacy or the 2011 Smurfs movie. The Super Mario Bros. may be a bit basic and safe, but it's not a waste of time.

For one, we've never seen Mario and the Mushroom Kingdom look this good. Illumination may not have the stellar track record of Pixar, but this movie is filled with gorgeously detailed characters, vibrant worlds jam-packed with detail and some of the most fluid animation I've seen in years. It's a visual feast, and it makes me long for the day when a Mario game can look so lush (as much as I loved Super Mario Odyssey , it's visuals are held back by the Switch's aging hardware).

And for the most part, the voice acting kept me invested. Jack Black is inspired as Bowser, a hopeless romantic who can only express his feelings through song and world domination. Charlie Day basically plays his usual harried persona, but it fits Luigi, a character who mainly exists to support his little bigger brother. And Anya Taylor-Joy makes for a perfect Princess Peach, a leader who has to feign bravery to protect her adorable Mushroom Kingdom people.

For all of Chris Pratt's hype about his Mario voice, though, it's merely serviceable. The movie jokes about Charles Martinet's original problematic accent (Martinet also voices two characters in the film), but Pratt's spin on it just feels like someone pretending to be a schlubby Brooklynite. That's particularly surprising since Pratt injected so much life into his Lego Movie lead.

What's most disappointing about The Super Mario Bros. Movie is that it's so close to being genuinely great. If the film had more time to build up its characters, or if it made room for Jack Black unleash his full Tenacious D talents as Bowser, it would easily be stronger. Why not go a bit harder on that Mario Kart sequence? (Even Moana managed to fit in a Mad Max: Fury Road reference!) Why not spend a bit more time on the rivalry/budding bromance between Donkey Kong (Seth Rogen) and Mario?

With a projected opening weekend of $150 million or more, it's clear that Nintendo has a hit on its hands. A sequel is inevitable. I just hope that the company loosens up the next time around. After all, what fun is a Mario adventure without taking a few creative leaps over chasms of uncertainty?

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The Super Mario Bros. Movie Review

07 Apr 2023

The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)

The last time Mario — the lovably high-voiced moustachioed Italian plumber, and the most iconic name in video games — starred in a film, it bombed so badly that Nintendo waited 30 years before giving their mascot another crack at the big screen. Now something of an oddball cult classic, the 1993 Bob Hoskins -starring live-action version was both a strangely realistic take on the game (Mario is fixing broken dishwashers and worrying about paying rent)  and bafflingly outlandish (it is partly set in a dino-steampunk parallel dimension), bearing only tangential resemblance to the source material. This lively new animated version, on the other hand, is deeply faithful — to a fault.

This is exactly what you might expect from a Super Mario Bros. movie. It’s like a greatest hits parade of the franchise: there’s the rainbow road from  Mario Kart , the spooky house from  Luigi’s Mansion , the New Donk City level from  Super Mario Odyssey , the moons from  Super Mario Galaxy , and more obscure Easter Eggs besides (listen out for the GameCube start-up sound). The story borrows mechanics and terminology from the game, too: there are power-ups, blue shells and a side-scrolling mission. Brian Tyler’s score never misses an opportunity to borrow some of Koji Kondo’s gloriously recognisable musical motifs, either.

It’s-a-gonna win many box-office gold coins, no doubt. But the Bob Hoskins version is far more imaginative.

It’s all laser-designed to tickle the nostalgia adenoids of Nintendo nerds. But it ultimately never feels more than just a very high-definition, feature-length video game cutscene – the bit you sit through while waiting to play the actual game. While a training montage sequence hints at the repetitive trial-and-error of the original NES title, what follows only confirms that the real joy of these games was, first and foremost, the gorgeously designed, addictively satisfying gameplay.

Without that here, we’re left only with the characters, which are as thin as an 8-bit image file, and, with the possible exception of Jack Black (who brings a Tenacious D energy to his Bowser), entirely miscast. There’s an admirable attempt to explain this away, but in a world where everyone already knows exactly what Mario sounds like — the movie itself even reminds us, in a cameo from long-standing voice actor Charles Martinet — Chris Pratt ’s take simply doesn’t sound like Mario. (The Mario family as a whole, incidentally, are the most egregious Italian stereotypes to be seen this side of a Dolmio advert; how many “Mamma Mia!”s does it take to constitute a hate crime?)

This comes from Illumination, a studio that never quite earned the critical cred of rivals like Pixar or Cartoon Saloon, but through their  Minions  and  Sing  franchises have certainly figured out how to make millions of family-friendly dollars. You feel that half-term hymn sheet being sung from in the endless peril, the bright colours, the largely unfunny gags, the empty sentiment (“Nothing can hurt us as long as we’re together!”). The studio brings experience and talent; the standard of animation, crisply rendered and richly art-directed, is undeniably high. It’s-a-gonna win many box-office gold coins, no doubt. But the Bob Hoskins version is, if nothing else, far more imaginative.

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‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ Review: Sheer Animated Fun, and the Rare Video-Game Movie That Gives You a Prankish Video-Game Buzz

The second time's the charm for Mario on film, as Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy and a delectably villainous Jack Black voice a digital fairy tale that connects.

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Mario just wants to rescue his brother, but then he meets Princess Peach ( Anya Taylor-Joy ), who rules over the Mushroom Kingdom’s denizens, who have spherical mushroom heads and the faces of airbrushed babies; they’re led by Toad (Keegan-Michael Key), a cuddlebug with attitude. Mario then teams up with Princess Peach to save her kingdom from Bowser, a fire-breathing beastie who commands a vast army of Koopas, who are turtles. Bowser is a turtle too, if a rather monstrous one — he’s like a fusion of Lionel Barrymore, the Wayland Flowers puppet Madame, and, a T. Rex plushie made for toddlers.

Jack Black , who voices this horny demon, gives a stupendous performance. Bowser is in love with Princess Peach, even as he’s planning to attack her empire, and Black, conjuring something very different from his usual hipster-stoner vibe, makes Bowser a domineering but deeply insecure romantic, like the Phantom of Opera as a neurotic troglodyte. Having a villain who’s a vulnerable ogre you’re at once appalled, amused, and fascinated by makes this a very different sort of kinetic kiddie fantasia. When Bowser is onscreen with his flaming red eyebrows and S&M arm bands, his gap-toothed reptile leer, his Meat Loaf-meets-Axl Rose soft-rock odes to Peach, and his nerd’s megalomania, the audience is in heaven.

There’s a way that mainstream animation, not to mention my own taste in it, has been evolving. So much of it has become rote, with an empty fractious dazzle that doesn’t ultimately sustain interest. And the Pixar brand, much as it saddens me to say it, has in recent years lost some of its humanistic luster. The animated movies I’ve been most drawn to have been off the Pixar grid — movies like “Trolls” and “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” which merge a kind of kinetic virtuosity with an emotional flair that sneaks up on you. I’d put “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” in that camp. It’s going to be a huge, huge hit, but not just because of its beloved gamer pedigree. (That didn’t help “Super Mario Bros.” in 1993.) It’s because the movie, as directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic (from a script by Matthew Fogel), is a serious blast, with a spark of enchantment — that je ne sais quoi fusion of speed and trickery, magic and sophistication, and sheer play that…well, you feel it when you see it.

There have been approximately 50 movies based on video games, and most of them are terrible. I’ve had limited patience even for the ones that “work,” like the coolly depersonalized “Resident Evil” series or that first “Lara Croft” film. It’s not that I’m hostile to video games; it’s that the game and film mediums are so different. Then again, not all video games are the same — the funky nihilist hellscapes of Grand Theft Auto couldn’t be further removed from the interactive innocence of the Mario franchise. Mario presides over a digital playground that lifts the spirit to a place of split-second wonder, and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” stays true to that. Its ingenuity is infectious. You don’t have to be a Mario fan to respond to it, but the film is going to remind the millions who are why they call it a joystick.

Reviewed at AMC Lincoln Square, April 3, 2023. MPA Rating: PG. Running time: 92 MIN.

• Production: A Universal Pictures release of an Illumination, Nintendo, Universal production. Producers: Chris Meledandri, Shigeru Miyamoto.
• Crew: Directors: Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic. Screenplay: Matthew Fogel. Editor: Eric E. Osmond. Music: Koji Kondo, Brian Tyler.
• With: Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key, Seth Rogen, Fred Armisen, Sebastian Maniscalco, Charles Martinet, Kevin Michael Richardson.

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