Random Movie Review - The Original Super Mario Bros. Movie

 

So, by now, you may have seen The Super Mario Bros. Movie in cinemas. But did you know it's not the first film about the iconic video game duo? I bet you didn't. In 1993, a live action take on the franchise, came out and, well, it wasn't very well received. In fact, apart from the animated films and a few other live action films, the 90s did have a few bad films, including this one. Regarded as one of the worst films ever made, this was, I would say, an experiment. To see if Mario and the gang could be seen in a very different way on screen. To be fair to it, it does look like it was made like many of those dystopian films that we got in the 90s and early 00s. Far from the looks of the Mushroom Kingdom that we would get in the more recent film and the anime film that came before this one. It's also not the first time the Mario Brothers have appeared in live action form, as The Super Mario Bros. Super Show was the first that did that with its own rap, animated sequence and everything. Well, let's see if this now highly considered cult classic is as bad as people say it is:

So after we learn that Disney had a hand in the making of this film (they own Hollywood Pictures), the film starts with the iconic World 1-1 music. That is, until Mario Mario (and yes that is his last name, played by the late Bob Hoskins) narrates the prologue by telling us about the aftermath of the meteorite that hit Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs. Apparently in this universe, we have two dimensions with the surviving dinosaurs going into one of those dimensions. In the same dimension, a human baby girl is born. 20 years then pass and the Mario Brothers (Luigi Mario being played by John Leguizamo) are working as plumbers in Brooklyn. They are threatened to be out of business, but end up going to the other dimension when Luigi's love interest (I think?) Daisy (played by Samantha Mathis) along with some other girls including Mario's girlfriend Daniella (played by Dana Kaminski), get kidnapped. They end up in a place called Dinohattan and soon become caught in a plan by the evil President Koopa (played by the late Dennis Hopper) that sees people devolved into "Goombas" and "Koopas" and they must stop him and save the girls before things take a turn for the worse.

While I understand that experimentation may be a good thing, you need the right franchise to be able to do it. The Mario games, for years, have tried many different mechanics and gimmicks like the power ups and the different genres that the games have entered into. But it's just not gonna work in a film. People wanted the Mushroom Kingdom with the usual stuff that happens there, and although we do get a take on the different characters and so forth in this, it just doesn't work as well as it did the 2023 film. But had this be named something else and have next to no connection to the games, maybe it would've been more well received and the fact that it has since gained a cult following, implies that people have accepted it as its own thing. It was even meant to have a sequel, which of course we didn't get... at least in film form anyway. But you know, it's one of those "so bad it's good" kind of films and I did have a blast with it despite the oh so many problems it has. 6/10