Super Mario Bros - Go goomba!

I watched ‘Super Mario Bros’ in the cinema back in 1993.  I enjoyed it.  Today, I still watch it from time to time on DVD and I still enjoy it.  I guess I’m one of those select few who just didn’t get the hate this film got.

Maybe it was because, although I played a lot of video games during the eighties and nineties, I was rubbish at ALL Super Mario Bros games (and my cousin was annoyingly fantastic at them).  So, perhaps I was unaware of all the hype and expectations this ‘game to film’ adaptation had attached to it.

It’s a family adventure film.  Basically, there’s an alternate dimension where dinosaurs evolved into humans instead of the monkeys who did over here.  There, the evil dictator ‘Koopa’ wants to merge the two worlds and basically rule them both.  Luckily, plucky New York plumbers Mario and his bother Luigi travel there to stop him.  So, expect car chases, futuristic worlds and a few lasers and funky bazooka-like guns thrown into the mix.

Yes, it’s hardly a classic.  Everything it spoon-fed to us on a plate.  You won’t need to exercise much brainpower to really understand what’s happening here.  Every scene tells us something we need to know and everyone speaks as if they’re explaining the entire theory of the universe at all times.
I thought it was good – just a light-hearted family, sci-fi adventure romp.  But then I’m in the minority.  If you’ve never seen it then you should be aware that 99% of people HATED it.  It’s largely one of the biggest cinematic flops ever.  I guess it’s because Super Mario Bros had such a large following that everyone of its fans had their own idea about what they wanted to see from the live-action film and they didn’t get anything near.  The computer Mario world is cute and colourful.  The filmic version is a dark, depressing dystopia-future more akin to Bladerunner.

When I watched it last, I guess one scene can sum up its failings (and not just the slightly dodgy ‘goombas’ masks which are blatantly just small masks stuck on tall men’s bodies).  It’s a nightclub scene where the clientele are dressed in what I would describe as ‘fetishwear’ (complete with gimp masks).  I guess the BDSM scene was not what most cinema goers were expecting from source material where mushrooms waddle about the screen and coins bounce up from floating blocks in the air.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that