[year/rating] 1993 PG [genre] Video Game Fantasy [director] Annabel Jankel & Rocky Morton [starring] Bob Hoskins John Leguizamo Dennis Hopper Samantha Mathis

Tagline

This Ain't No Game, It's a Live-Action Thrill Ride!

Summary Capsule

The Mario Bros. stomp out Koopa crime under the streets. Yeah.

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DnaError's Rating: Dennis Hopper needs the work
DnaError's Review: As a mutant, I often find myself having to defend my movie choices. Apparently, some people don't like watching the The Fifth Element or Heavy Metal. Freaks I say, total freaks; and for some reason, these same freaks don't like watching Super Mario Brothers.

"Don't even try to follow the mind-blinding absurdity of it all. People who have end up taking their food through a tube."

Why this movie isn't already reviewed on this site is a mystery to me. It has all the elements of a cult film: bizarre storyline, twisted sets, genre-locked, normal people hate it, and it's camped out of it's ground. I guess, once again, it's up to a DnaError to bring these things to light! The movie is based on the popular video game, coincidentally called Super Mario Brothers. However, it's based on the game in the same way that Demi Moore's The Scarlet Letter was based on the book. They got the names right, and that's about it.

Frankly, this isn't a bad thing. The game never had a weighty storyline: eat mushrooms, thomp some koopas, find the princess in another castle. I give the writers credit for taking a basic idea and running with it, turning a simple adventure story into a convulsed cruller of a tale about evolution, ripped-off Blade Runner sets, thinking fungus, lost princesses, other dimensions, and plumbers who save the world. I refuse to rehash the plot here simply because it doesn't make any sense. Really, it makes less sense then Richard Simmons at an Anorexics Convention. Don't even try to follow the mind-blinding absurdity of it all. People who have end up taking their food through a tube.

The cast gives a gleefully cornball performance. Bob Hoskins of Who Framed Roger Rabbit fame plays the chubby, Italian-stereotype Mario, and his brother, the younger, taller more sensible Luigi is played by a young, shorter, more random John Leguizamo. Samantha Mathis rounds out the cast as the dinosaur-petting, perpetually-in-peril Princess Daisy, and Dennis Hopper is the evil CEO/President/Leader, Koopa.

While I recommend the movie, it comes with a warning. I have a high tolerance for camp and cheese. I seek it out actually. And the key to enjoying this movie, and others like it, is to just roll with all the bizarrely and overdone-ness and utterly insane fun of it. It's junk, but it's FUN junk, that's what makes all the difference.

Justin's Rating: 1UP
Justin's Review: Properly adapting video games to movie formats seems mostly to elude movie studios. I mean, the whole point of making such a film is to capitalize off the popular success of the game, but somewhere in the process, I think Hollywood becomes convinced that all games actually suck and they can do it better by changing everything. C’mon folks, we’ve seen this again and again. It particularly doesn’t help when the game in question is a loose association of dream images with no actual plot. Enter Super Mario Bros.

"Curse you, space rocks with dimension-creating abilities!"

If Super Mario Bros. wanted to be really faithful to the game, it would star an unstoppable god-like plumber who lays waste to an entire world. He’d munch on "magic" mushrooms that would make his self-confidence swell and give him the ability to light his farts and throw them. Massive bullets would zoom around the screen at ½ mile per hour with angry faces on them. The hero would stop every two inches to punch walls until whole palaces fell apart due to structural failure. And of course, transsexual dinosaurs spitting eggs from their mouth would be a commonplace fixture, but that goes without saying.

And if this movie really wanted to be true to the game, at the end of the film you’d be informed via big blocky text that the actual ending is in another theater. Then you’d have to watch SMB seven more times until you got the real ending. Well, small blessing for us.

Oh, but that’s not what we get. Skewing toward the head-damaged 8-year-old demographic, Super Mario Bros. samples just a pinch of elements from the game and slathers it over with Funky Wackiness and cartoon sound effects. The end result is a movie that was too strange for normals to rightly enjoy, but will forever exist as a forerunner to the rash of cruddy video game adaptations to follow in the 90's.

Our two plumbers, Mario and Luigi, follow Token Kidnapped Love Interest Daisy into a parallel dimension caused by a meteor. Curse you, space rocks with dimension-creating abilities! This other dimension is full of fungus (there’s your mushroom connection), bad special effects, and run by the evil Koopa. Bouncing happy stars are nowhere to be seen, and that is bushwa. Convenient for the makeup department, all of the "dinosaurs" in this dimension have evolved into people with neck twitches. Thus, the theory of evolution has been upgraded to, "It doesn’t matter what animal you are, eventually you’ll look humanish." There’s also a lot of nonsense about a shard of meteor, jump boots, and a cute little dinosaur named Yoshi.

Yes, the producers pretty much wanted every Mario fan out there to fall into fits not by ignoring the game completely, but instead just using the familiar names with random nonsense. "Hey, this is a Goomba!" the producers tell you, pointing at a dinosaur-headed goon. "And Bomb-ombs are now helpful! And very tiny!"

"But… but… but… you can‘t…" video game fans everywhere say, before falling into comas.

Yet despite all the poor adaptation and kiddie theatrics, SMB has a distinct and pleasant taste to the refined cult palate. This is the kind of film I’d expect to hate without a second thought, but how can I, when they give Dennis Hopper a forked tongue and feature dancing dinosaurs in an elevator? You’d have to be some sort of mass murderer to condemn that. Wait, you haven’t killed an entire cult’s worth of people in the past day, have you?

Have you?

I swear this reminds me of a high school teacher I once had Yeah... no french kisses with you, buster "High five! We suck to the next level!"

Didja Notice? [some sources: IMDb]

• The crappy NES-graphics animated intro with dinosaurs speaking in Brooklyn accents
• Meteors can apparently create parallel dimensions for dinosaurs. Who’d have thought?
• Churches are a good place to drop off your baby eggs. Nuns dig that sort of thing.
• Belief can make anything possible. I believe this is a crappy movie. Poof!
• Wow, that guy tans.
• The bickering between the brothers is painful to listen to
• Luigi has a disorder when it comes to hitting on girls
• Yelling does a heck of a lot in movies. Shut up a your mouth.
• Enjoy 5 minutes of Mario and Luigi saying "What is this place? This is crazy!" again and again
• De-fungused
• Plumber Alert?
• It took me a bit to figure this out, but the Koopa cars run off electricity, not gas (since that’s made out of dinosaur fossil fuel)
• Cars use the same tow line that jet fighters use on aircraft carriers
• Toad is a folk singer
• Dinosaurs with flame throwers… sweet
• Some of the police flame throwers only shoot about two feet. Perhaps they’re not that great as projectile weapons.
• The evolved idiot brothers are actually quite funny
• This is not Samantha Mathis’ finest hour
• Dude, did he just call you a "scallywag"?
• She WAS corpulent!
• The Mario dancing sequence is outright embarrassing…
• …but the dino elevator dancing scene is classic!
• Dino pizza delivered to your evil headquarters
• Your dad is gross Daisy
• Mario hates heights? Since WHEN?
• Bomb-ombs have 9 minute fuses
• Mario's last name is Mario
• Toad is played by Mojo Nixon, a cult rock singer
• The "Thwomp" club

Is It Worth Staying Through End Credits?

After the closing credits, some Japanese business men ask Iggy and Spike about appearing in a video game based on the incidents in the movie.

Unnecessary Background

Mario's first appearance in a video game was in 1981's Donkey Kong (where Mario was just called "Jumpman"). In 1983's Mario Bros., Mario and Luigi teamed up for the first time, introducing many of the series staples -- jumping onto enemies, punching things from underneath, collecting coins, etc. But it wasn't until 1985 and Super Mario Bros. that Mario and his brother really came into the spotlight. It was one of the most influential and addictive games of its time, which spawned numerous sequels and became one of Nintendo's flagship products.

Mario's place in video game history is notable because SMB established and cemented many rules of the sidescrolling "action platform" game (where characters go left and right, crossing obstacles and defeating enemies).

Super Mario Bros. were actually first featured in the 1989 film The Wizard; however, this appearance was only to promote Super Mario Bros. 3, as they showed the game on screens.

Intermission! [some sources: IMDb]

There were FOUR directors for SMB, two uncredited. That's never a good sign.

This film draws off the popularity of the Nintendo Super Mario Brothers games, which have included (among others): Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3., Super Mario World, Mario Kart, Mario 64, Super Mario Kart, Super Mario RPG, Mario Kart 64, Super Mario World 2, Super Mario Land, Super Mario Land 2, Super Mario Land 3, Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, and Super Mario Sunshine.

Groovy Quotes

Luigi: Trust the fungus!

Daisy: Look at the thumb, it's like a monster trying to be a man.

Lugi: Maybe we got knocked out and this is the Manhattan of the future...
Mario: Or maybe the Bronx of today, no wonder they never tell you to come down here.

Desk Sergeant: Okay how many Marios are there between the two of you?
Luigi: Three: Mario Mario and Luigi Mario.

Princess Daisy: I'm a vegetarian, I don't eat anything with a face.

Mario: Great, a building with athlete's foot.

Toad: Say, what's another word that rhymes with dimension?
Mario: Yeah, tension, and I'm full of it so shut up.

Luigi: By the bar, that big lady with the red spikes took the rock.
Iggy: Was she corpulent? Very corpulent?
Luigi: No, she was really, really round.

DVD Review

The only "feature" on this disc is the classic SMB theme, played over and over and over while you peruse the THREE options on the main menu. Wow.

If you liked this movie, try these:

• Street Fighter
• Double Dragon
• Resident Evil