Since its cast announcement via Nintendo Direct September 2021, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” has captured the interests of a wide range of audiences. The release of its trailers showed great quality in its animation. With the release of the first trailer, fans have expressed their excitement with the suspenseful teasers and colorful advertisements. Nintendo’s first film since the failure of the original 1993 live-action “Super Mario Bros.” movie broke the record for the highest-grossing animated film opening making $204.6 million in its first five days, taking the top spot from “Frozen 2”.

Created by the animation studio responsible for “Minions” and “Despicable Me”, Illumination collaborated with the video game company Nintendo to create a film about the famous Super Mario series. Because Nintendo did not want a recreation of their previous infamous Super Mario movie, the film clearly expressed Nintendo’s influence on Illumination as “The Super Mario Bros. Movie”. The film takes the top spot of Illumination’s best visually looking movie to date.

The film’s soundtrack used a great number of motifs from the “Super Mario” game series such as those from “Super Mario Odyssey”, “Luigi’s Mansion” and other games while also using classic sound effects and jingles throughout the movie. The only damaging factor relating to the music concerns the licensed music or the licensed use of copyrighted music. The film used “Take on Me” by A-ha in a scene within the Donkey Kong sequence, but after the film’s release viewers noticed that this scene originally included the song “Drivin’ Me Bananas”, an original song created for the film, until “Take on me” replaced it. Although the licensed song did not take any aspect away from the movie, including the cut song created for the film would have improved the sequence. The end of the film featured “Mr. Blue Sky” which, along with the aforementioned song, felt out of place from the cartoonish and fictional setting that excelled with the orchestral-sounding original soundtrack.

When Nintendo first announced the voice actors for the movie, viewers expressed their concerns with actor Chris Pratt voicing the main man in red as his voice bears almost no resemblance to the high-pitched Italian plumber. In the film, Pratt worked well with the voice of Mario while Anya Taylor Joy as Princess Peach felt out of place among all of the voice actors. The rest of the cast consisted of Charlie Day as Luigi, Jack Black as Bowser, Keegan-Micheal Key as Toad and Seth Rogan as Donkey Kong. 

“It was awesome, one of the best-animated movies I’ve ever seen. Honestly, I’m not even joking it’s like a nine-out-of-ten-movie. Really good fun for the whole family. Don’t listen to the 57% by the critics, they’re wrong,” sophomore Ryland Addison said.

The greatest flaw in the film deals with the pacing and length. The movie tries fitting an abundance of plot in an hour and thirty minutes, forcing the viewer to move quickly onto the next scene instead of allowing the audience to take in the moment and breathe. The film could easily fix this film by extending the runtime by a short amount for it to not feel as quick.

The plot of the film does not break any ground but it definitely entertained the viewers. The plot of the film makes Mario and Luigi save the Mushroom Kingdom against Bowser and his army, not too different from the video games series in which Mario saves a kidnapped peach from Bowser or similar situations.

“They’re definitely gonna start shilling out. I wish that Luigi was a bit more of a character in it, but the parts that we do get are fun and enjoyable. I don’t have too many complaints because it’s just overall a crowd-pleaser movie. It’s nice and simple and it’s just fun to watch. Seth Rogan and Jack Black are the best part of the movie along with the movie. Those two stole the show in my mind,” Addison said.

The Chant’s Grade: B+