The Super Mario Bros. Movie – ★★★½
Fantastic looking and tons of fun references. Adequate storyline that anyone whose ever played a Mario game could predict, but good enough for a fun afternoon at the theater with the kids.
Although it is not a nonstop laugh fest, it got several big laughs from my kids, despite the fact that they are more into Minecraft/The Sims than they are into Mario. It is definitely a kids’ movie with references for us “olds,” but it was made lovingly and shows a real understanding and appreciation of the Mario characters and worlds.
Anya Taylor-Joy’s Peach and especially Jack Black’s Bowser were definitely the highlights, but all of the performances were good. Yes, including Chris Pratt.
Special shoutout to the nihilistic Lumalee the Luma who stole the show in their brief appearances.
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Super Mario Bros. (1993) – ★★
The goomba creature design is the most baffling thing about this truly deranged movie.
I have now watched both Citizen Kane and Super Mario Bros. (1993) in the last 48 hours. Truly, both are pinnacles of cinema.
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Super Mario Brothers: Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach – ★★★½
Watched this with my youngest kid in 4k thanks to the fantastic restoration available on the Internet Archive. Looked surprisingly great and considering it is from only one year after the original Super Mario Bros. for NES there were a number of characters rendered surprisingly close to what they’d eventually look like in games 20+ years later. Definitely bonkers in some places and all the toad characters are certifiably horrifying.
Now I’m looking forward to the new Super Mario Bros movie’s post credit scene revealing the hot anime Prince Haru spinoff.
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Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins – ★★★★
Super Mario Land 2 was next up in my first time exploration of the Game Boy.
I have played and bounced off the first Super Mario Land before (including on my TI85 calculator in high school) so was surprised how fun and unique 6 Golden Coins was. The level design and enemy design variety is fun and there are so many weird ones that never show up in other Mario games. Maybe we can get a Super Mario Movie post credits scene featuring Skeleton Bee. Lol.
Not super hard (especially thanks to cheesing with save states) and the actual gameplay wasn’t too varied, but still a blast to quickly (3 hours?) play through to see everything including the delightfully ugly tiny pixel Wario.
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