“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” continued to rack up coins at the box office, leading ticket sales for the third straight weekend as the animation hit neared $1 billion after just 18 days in theaters.
“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” is setting a torrid pace for an animated movie. This week, it became the highest grossing animated release of the pandemic era, with domestic ticket sales up to $434.3 million through Sunday and its global tally at $871.1 million.
Passionate Mario fans will find a lot to love in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, as nearly every scene is full of tributes to the beloved brothers and their gaming legacy, to the point that these will distract you from the fact that you came to see a movie. Younger audiences will likely be enraptured by the bright and playful sequences, as well as the physical antics of the adventure.
It took nearly four decades, one spectacular live-action misfire, and dozens of other failed video game adaptations to learn from, but none of it went to waste: Illumination and Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. Movie finally gives the most iconic character in gaming the onscreen adventure he’s always deserved. Benefitting immensely from the endless creativity of the innumerable game developers, artists, and musicians who’ve made the Mario franchise a pop culture juggernaut, The Super Mario Bros. Movie rockets along with the momentum of a Bullet Bill exploding out of a cannon. The Mushroom Kingdom is realized with incredible detail and reverence, and not even a Paper Mario-thin plot can keep the magic of the games from being lost along the way.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie’s setup is dead simple: while on a plumbing job underneath Brooklyn, brothers Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) are sucked into the Mushroom Kingdom through a warp pipe and become embroiled in King Bowser’s (Jack Black) plans to steal the Super Star, which would give him the power to take over the Toad-filled domain of Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy). Mario’s Cheep-Cheep-out-of-water journey hits all the predictable beats of the “warrior from another world” narrative, but decades of Mario games ensure co-directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic (Teen Titans Go!) have an infinite well of wild scenarios and iconography to pull from to stage inventive action moments, especially once Mario’s gotten a handle of how to properly fly with a Tanooki suit.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is constantly and joyfully entertaining, and that’s crucial because it lacks any meaningful thematic throughline outside of “we can do anything when we work together!” That lesson feels like an obligated afterthought considering Mario and Luigi spend the majority of this movie separated – not because of any emotional fracture between them early on, but by pure happenstance (warp pipes are crazy!) The brothers mostly agree on everything, and both are quick to enlist the help of allies when the time comes, so the little effort that went into that aspect of the story goes very much amiss. This feels especially frustrating considering the pair of brief flashbacks which give us insights into the characters’ childhoods. Both of these short scenes manage a comparatively touching tone, and hint at better avenues the story could’ve explored to make Mario, Luigi, and Peach feel more fully formed.
