I'm going to be honest, I hate Illumination Studios. I have not seen all of their movies, and I doubt they're all terrible movies. However, Illumination is easily the poster boy for "Safe" movies. The kind of movies that are so inoffensive and non-threatening that they straight up annoy me. So, I was actually kind of excited for The Super Mario Bros. Movie, as surprising as that sounds, because the trailers and screen-shots of the movie made it look so much different and more unique from the rest of Illumination's output. So I waited with anticipation and high, but reasonable expectations. I was not expecting something like a Secret of NIMH or a Felidae here, honestly if Illumination made a movie on par with either of those, I'd would be beyond amazed, but I was kind of expecting Illumination to take a risk, be bold and raise their bar by a lot, and did they accomplish that?
Truthfully, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is... somewhat what I expected. By Illumination's standards it is a very risky movie, but that is by Illumination standards, which is a bar so low it's practically in the Earth's outer core. Secret Life of Pets 2 and Minions: The Rise of Gru were not awful movies, but they were fairly safe and formulaic. Not that this movie is not formulaic at all, but it isn't as predictable as Minions 2 was. Minions 2 had the recognizable pattern of the standard family film, the third act break-up that is meant to be emotional only to bring everyone together in the end because "Hey, I didn't really mean what I said". There is a bit of a third act break-up here, but it isn't played with a misunderstanding or a emotional low point... sort of. It was more a consequence of the action. Plot wise, I do think Illumination stepped out on a limb here, a baby step maybe, but still a step.
Of course, no discussion of this movie is complete without talking about the voice cast, namely one Pratt by name of Chris. Chris Pratt is the voice of Mario and... he's fine. Yes, it would have been nice if we got Charles Martinet as the voice, but Chris Pratt does fine. Charles Martinet is not forgotten in this movie, being the voice of Mario's Dad, which is a nice touch. Honestly, my biggest issues with the voice actors lay with Cranky Kong and Bowser. Cranky Kong's actor was fine, but he sounded way too young for this role, I always imagine Cranky with a Red Green kind of voice, old and grizzled without a hint of wisdom. as for Bowser, for the most part he's actually fine, great even, but when he sings he often slips into Jack Black's regular voice, and that is just distracting. I love Jack Black, and I do think he was a good casting choice for Bowser, but moments like that did pull me out of the movie a bit.
Honestly though, those were my only complaints. Everything else is fairly good. The animation is colourful and does its job pretty well, the story moved at a good pace, and the characters were pretty well written. Avid Mario fans are also going to enjoy spotting references all over the place, with things like Pauline's cameo, Foreman Spike and his hat saying Wrecking Crew, the Dragon Coin from Super Mario World and the shop from Mario Odyssey, plus references to other Nintendo properties like Punch-Out and Kid Icarus. Some references I would have loved to see would have been mostly characters that could appear in a potential sequel (Wink wink) such as Wario, Waluigi, Daisy, Rosalina and Toadsworth, who relly should have been on the council of Toads, but I digress.
On Twitter, Crimson Mayhem put forth the question about Illumination making a movie based on The Legend of Zelda. Honestly, I will still need a tad bit more convincing for that. Not that I don't think Illumination can pull it off, but they really should get some more experience with video game adaptations before I'm fully on board. Honestly, I think now would be the best time for a Zelda movie, since video game adaptations are finally getting quality releases, with the Sonic movies being enjoyed by games fans and general audiences, and this movie being pretty solid. Is it the big risky move I was expecting from Illumination? Not really, but to be fair, I was kind of expecting a lot there, wasn't I? The fact that this movie is better than "Watchable" is quite frankly astounding on its own. I'm hoping this isn't just a fluke, but I doubt it's a sign of things to come. I can say this movie gets a solid Recommendation from me.
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