Super Mario Bros movie - Rotten Tomatoes score revealed
The Super Mario Bros Movie is out on April 5, and ahead of its release, reviews have officially dropped.
While more reviews will be published as critics who didn't get to see the movie ahead of time watch and review it, the ones already out paint a pretty mixed picture.
Some reviewers love the relatively short length and the faithfulness to the games, while others see the film as an empty piece of brand synergy that doesn't have the space for any character depth.
At the time of writing, the film's Rotten Tomatoes score is 46%. This means that less than half of the reviews are generally positive.
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Let's see what the reviews have said.
"Given how badly fans took the 1993 film, it's a smart approach to have The Super Mario Bros Movie be almost entirely for the fanbase. It's absolutely stacked with Easter eggs from across all of the Mario series — including musical nods, visual gags and a couple of 2D platformer sequences, among other things."
"It's not subtle and makes the movie a series of 'hey, you remember this?' moments rather than an actual plot, but Mario fans won't be complaining."
"It's all quite fun, with a good sense of humor and a consistent computer-animated aesthetic — plus, at 90 minutes including credits, it's short, sweet, and over before anything can get annoying."
"But it's hard to escape the feeling, especially during the [...] Rainbow Road sequence, that you would probably be having more fun just playing a game together instead."
"I was a bit surprised at how, sort of, unsurprising the movie is. At only 92 minutes, we don't have much time for anything outside the main plot. The filmmakers packed a lot of Nintendo in that short runtime, and they want to make sure we see all of it. So we only have time for the broadest of story beats. Mario wants to make his family proud; Peach wants to save her people; Donkey Kong wants to prove he’s not just a meathead.
"It's very by-the-numbers hero's journey stuff. Not a complaint, just an observation. I'll say it again: This isn't The LEGO Movie."
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"As nice as it is to look at The Super Mario Bros Movie, it's not anywhere near as fun as it would be to play it. It's a-him, Mario, but it's no a-masterpiece. The storyline is only a touch above the interstitial bits of plot you usually get between gameplay.
"With the exception of Jack Black’s grandly lovesick Bowser (he's part Phantom of the Opera, part Meatloaf-styled balladeer), there's nothing here that deepens these characters beyond their usual 2D adventures."
"Does The Super Mario Bros. Movie surpass said expectations? It doesn’t, but it at least meets them halfway. The film moves forward on the bare minimum of structure, and chooses to make up for its shortcomings with an overabundance of reverent Easter eggs and worn '80s pop needle drops.
"It traffics hard in cuteness, as a defence against worthwhile criticism."
"As it's building toward its logical and very traditional Mario kind of ending, it uses every possible opportunity it has to make its various fantastical worlds feel like living, breathing, organic places that you'd want to spend hours exploring if they were parts of an open-world video game.
"It's cool as hell every single time someone's outfit transforms after they ingest mushroom power-ups, but it's things like being able to see each of the individual seeds on a fire flower's face flicking like a candle that really make you appreciate how hard the movie's working."
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"I'm shocked by just how terrible this effort is: a new Nintendo cinematic embarrassment for a generation that isn't old enough to remember/know about 1993's live-action Super Mario Bros.
"It's pleasant to look at, with animators directly translating the wonderful aesthetics of the source material to the big screen, but it fails to exercise even one inventive or clever idea. Instead, it functions more like a checklist of nods to the games than a narrative feature."
The Super Mario Bros Movie will be released in cinemas tomorrow (April 5).
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