You might occasionally forget while watching “Sonic the Hedgehog” or “A Minecraft Movie” that these big-screen comedy successes were originally videogames. There’s no possibility, however, that the Nintendo source material will leave your mind during 2023’s animated smash “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” or its sequel, “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.” Rather than being adaptations, they’re more like fan-service brand extensions that simply recreate the characters and action that fans have loved for decades.
The sequel is, like its predecessor,
You might occasionally forget while watching “Sonic the Hedgehog” or “A Minecraft Movie” that these big-screen comedy successes were originally videogames. There’s no possibility, however, that the Nintendo source material will leave your mind during 2023’s animated smash “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” or its sequel, “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.” Rather than being adaptations, they’re more like fan-service brand extensions that simply recreate the characters and action that fans have loved for decades.
The sequel is, like its predecessor, wall-to-wall animated frenzy, with chases, fights and handsomely detailed set pieces such as a topsy-turvy casino land where characters walk on walls and ceilings. Playing to the briefest attention spans, every few minutes characters rush from world to world to confront game-style obstacles (leaping across floating platforms, dodging fireballs) amid a color scheme that suggests an explosion at the Skittles factory. There’s nothing wrong with making movies for 5-year-olds. But, as directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic and written by Matthew Fogel, “Galaxy” seems very much like a movie made by 5-year-olds.
Our heroes, Brooklyn plumbers Mario (voiced by Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day), use a magical underground pipe as a conduit to fantasy worlds. In one of them, a princess named Rosalina (Brie Larson) gets kidnapped and held prisoner, to the consternation of her adoring army of adoptive children, the toddler-like star-shaped little guys called Lumas.
Meanwhile, after the plumbers captured the villainous giant turtle Bowser (Jack Black) and shrank him down to the size of a mouse in the previous feature, the malefactor’s son Bowser Jr. (Benny Safdie) has vowed to take up the old man’s evil ways and do him one better by creating his own nefarious empire—Planet Bowser.
Still friends with visitors from the Mushroom Kingdom, Toad (Keegan-Michael Key) and Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy), whom Bowser tried to force into marriage and on whom Mario has a major crush, the boys continue on their universal mission of unblocking pipes. One blockage turns out to be a goofy, baby-talking little dinosaur, Yoshi (Donald Glover), who, having nothing better to do, joins the plumbers on their adventures.
Bowser, who has reformed and seems like a nice guy even after he tricks Luigi and Mario into setting him free from his miniaturization spell, is at first hesitant to follow his son back into iniquity. But the movie needs him to be the baddie, so he reverts to evildoing for no apparent reason.
So goes the ragged plotting. Now we’re on Vegas World; now we’re on Jurassic Planet; now we’re on a planet ruled by a gigantic queen bee. Bowser Jr.’s domain is an amusement park. Glen Powell pops up as a Han Solo derivative, the dashing pilot Fox McCloud, but though the movie is fascinated by his look (silver sleeveless jacket) he doesn’t get a lot to do.
The aim is to be bustlingly kinetic, but the feel is pure kindergarten: no logic, just jerky leaps from one gaming situation to the next, with characters and objects taking on whatever powers are needed. There’s a glancing attempt to bring in some Disney-style emotional resonance—Peach was separated from her family when very young and is delighted to learn that Rosalina is her older sister—but the filmmakers don’t bother developing the matter.
The “Sonic” and “Minecraft” films did their duty by hiring pretty good comedy writers to connect the gaming high jinks. But there’s almost nothing in “Galaxy” that even rises to the level of an attempted gag, and the movie is notably weaker than “The Super Mario Bros,” which was just barely watchable. Random observations on the silliness of all the action—“That monkey just used his cuteness for crime!”—are about as close as we get to humor.
Wacky character traits get trotted out merely for visual dazzle, not to generate any intrigue. There’s a ray gun that transforms its targets into babies. Bowser gets turned into a skeleton version of himself. As for the glowing, rubbery Lumas, they’re supposed to be cute (mission accomplished) and cheerful (ditto) and colorful (ditto). But that’s all there is to them, and to the feature as a whole. Think of it as The Inferior Mario Bros. Movie.
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