The Super Mario Bros. Movie, released on April 5th, 2023, has remained popular since its initial release. With how much adventure and nostalgia it brings to its audience, there’s no reason why the movie’s popularity would ever dwindle. A film truly capable of receiving multiple re-watches of it, Super Mario Bros. captured everyone’s youthful souls across the globe over the past few days. 

The movie captures many things about the Mario Games series correctly, the magnificent Mushroom Kingdom inhabited by our favorite Mushroom people, power-ups like the fire flower, super leaf, and ice flower from Super Mario Bros, superstars from Mario Kart, and the infamous blue shell, green shell, and red shell, and Kart customization. Additionally, the creatures/mobs and the vast landscapes across the magical land are all accurate to certain levels of the Mario games and racetracks of Mario Kart, like the famous rainbow road and thwomp swamp. Even references to spin-off games from the franchise, like Luigi’s arrival at the abandoned mansion (Luigi’s Mansion). The directors and scriptwriters did a fantastic job with the film, even giving accurate phrases and personality traits to our characters, some even being ironic, like Mario’s distaste for mushrooms, even though he’s always eating them for power-ups in the video games. However, the film also has its downsides; its fast-paced style makes it very predictable in how it’ll end with Mario saving the day and the princess from the clutches of Bowser. Although I digress, as this was a fantastic adaptation of a videogame into a movie, and possibly the groundwork for more being created from other trendy video game franchises. 

And despite its Rotten Tomatoes score of 59%, the thrill of the movie is not there, as it’s a very fast-paced film it only lasts for an hour and thirty minutes; its audience score, however, reaches 96% for its colorful aspects, and the incorporation of many mechanisms of some of the more popular of the Mario Games series like Mario Kart, Donkey Kong, and Super Mario Bros that tapped the inner child of many of the hearts of its audience. 

The main actors in the film, Chris Pratt (Mario), Jack Black (Bowser), Charlie Day (Luigi), Anya Talyor-Joy (Peach), Seth Rogen (Donkey Kong), and Keegan-Michael Key (Toad), all played a fantastic job in their respective roles. With a lot of bashing towards some of them before the movie’s release, like Chris Pratt as Mario, fans were not very fond of it. And pair that up with the odd cast that nobody would’ve ever guessed took the roles in this film. However, after the trailers and the movie’s release, fans began liking it, especially Chris Pratt and his star role. Jack Black played amazingly as Bowser, a role fans loved and believed suited the actor ideally. Charlie Day, an Italian-American (Luigi), received much praise. Seth Rogen, who many noticed, didn’t change his voice at all for Donkey Kong but was spectacular. Both Taylor-Joy as Peach and Keegan-Michael as Toad played amazingly in their cute little friendship in the movie.