Super Mario Bros. The Film – Entertaining for All Audiences | Review

Super Mario Bros. The Movie is an animated comedy-adventure film released on April 5 and produced by Illumination Entertainment in association with Nintendo, with distribution handled by Universal Pictures. This film is the third adaptation of Nintendo's Mario game franchise, the film was directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic and is a story written by Matthew Fogel.

The story of Super Mario Bros. The film narrates the life of the Italian-American brothers Mario and Luigi who recently opened a business as plumbers in the city of Brooklyn. Their father disapproves of Mario's decision to leave his steady job with his antagonistic former employer Spike and believes he is dragging Luigi down with him. After seeing a significant leak in a manhole on the news, Mario and Luigi go underground to fix it, but are sucked into a Warp Pipe and separated.

From then on, the two are lost and Mario arrives at the Mushroom Kingdom and tries to contact Princess Peach after learning that Luigi would be in the Shadow Kingdom, a place ruled by the terrible and amazing Bowser. The Mushroom Kingdom had its days numbered because it was being threatened by Bowser and his troops, while Mario was only interested in saving his brother. Mario decides to join the Mushroom Kingdom to save his brother, while the Princess, knowing that the inhabitants of her kingdom are fragile, would seek support in the Jungle Kingdom to have the Kongs on her side and end Bowser at all costs.

Image: Disclosure/Buena Vista Pictures

When it comes to adapting games for the cinema, many gamers are reticent and expect the worst, and with Mario this was no different after everything that was delivered in his past adaptations. The Super Mario Bros. O Filme was the first 3D film I watched, it was a strange experience at first, but I understood its function and its differential.

Also, I'm not a fan of the Mario universe, I have nothing against it, I just never played the Nintendo franchise games so much, the Nintendo brand didn't participate as much in my childhood as its competitors. Because of this, my lack of prior knowledge to watch the film should be taken into account in this review, it is obvious that as an old gamer that I am, I already know the franchise and its characters through long quotes, but nothing compares to those faithful squires of Mario and company.

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The animation is impeccable, the details of the eyes and movements of the characters make this film very special for a theater full of animated films, Super Mario Bros. The film has many references and, even though I have never played Mario games until now, I understood many of the references. I believe that, in addition to the whimsical animation, what most caught my attention were the highly well-crafted and fun sequences to watch, many of them reminiscent of Mario game stages and with great music from the 80s in the background, the sequences make the film much more dynamic and the adventurous desire appears in moments. If you're one of those people who've always played 2D games, you'll find an absurd sequence in the first moments of the film, it's a waste of total creativity that they had to carry out such a whimsical job.

Image: Disclosure/Buena Vista Pictures

In Super Mario Bros. The film's comedy is guaranteed, the film was watched by me in its local dubbing (Brazil), that Brazilian touch and the absurd quality that we have in the location is found in this film. Several times I found myself laughing and scared with the man who was sitting in front of me accompanied by his daughter and wife, the dear guy was laughing the whole time, at times when the audience wasn't even laughing, well, one more reason for me to have laughed so much during the film.

Super Mario Bros. The Film is a short film, approximately one hour and forty minutes, it is a short film to please the children's audience and that manages to please the adult audience who have not even played the games, the film manages to please all audiences and bring fun to everyone. The film does not have a boring script, it is a highly dynamic film that does not waste time making different explanations. The soundtrack is one of the references that we can find in the film, it is faithfully present and has variations of the Mario universe for every moment of the film, only a fan of the franchise will notice.

It's me Mario! – Mario

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