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Super Mario Bros. — The Movie!

Here's my extremely scatterbrained review of Super Mario Bros., the 1993 film that took more than a few liberties with its video game subject matter. Here's a surprise: I absolutely did not hate this movie. It's ridiculous and stupid, but it's got a lot going on, and some of it really works. Maybe it's just that it's so unbelievably different from any other movie I've seen. Maybe it's just the Bob-ombs. The review is more an exercise in throwing a bunch of random shit at the html wall to try to convey the broad, silly themes of the film. In other words, it's all over the place. Still, if you've never seen the Bob Hoskins version of Mario, I'd recommend a viewing.

Posted by Matt on 06/23/2004. E-mail me!



Discussion Thread: 260 comments

I’ve seen this movie right when it was released to video stores sense my family was too poor to afford 4 tickets to see it.
It’s a good movie and a lot of comedy gold can be drawn from it.
A kid I knew back in highschool was 6’5” and had a tiny head. When I wasnt calling him tall I was calling him goomba.

Chestnuts roasted by Eddie @ 06/28/2004 4:06 PM

I’m actually kinda surprised that this movie hadn’t been reviewed by you before, Matt. Oh well. Good job.

The best thing about the movie for me was hearing "Speed of Light" by Joe Satriani. That just instantly made it a bit better!

Chestnuts roasted by Ripplin @ 06/28/2004 5:06 PM

the first and only time I sw this movie was when it was int theatres and I was 5. The only thing I remember from the movie (and surprisingly enough Matt, you actually didn’t comment on), was when the bob-omb was about to blow up, they had the worst plug for a company ever. I don’t know if this was removed in the video, but i will never forget that before the bomb blew up, it swicthed to a below shot of the bomb, and it was wearing Reebok white shoes. That’s the only thing I remember surprisingly.

Chestnuts roasted by Behn @ 06/28/2004 5:17 PM

wait… did I say surprisingly? I meant thankfully… sorry about that guys. I saw it when I was 5, I loved it then. I gotta rent me this movie.

Chestnuts roasted by Behn @ 06/28/2004 5:20 PM

Man the dude who reviewed this must have been really bored. I read untill the first picture then just looked at the pictures.
I too admit to watching it when ever it is on coz it is never on cable here so when it’s on free too air once every 5 years then i watch it the the goo stuff was cool…or was that mystery men?

Chestnuts roasted by ozechick5 @ 06/28/2004 8:31 PM

This movie repulsed me when I first saw it (after the horrific reviews, I was too upset to want to see it in the theatres). I believe my parents were subjected to my ravings for days afterwards (Koopa is a GIANT SPIKY TURTLE, NOT DENNIS HOPPER! It’s supposed to be PRINCESS TOADSTOOL, NOT DAISY! WHY DOES TOAD LOOK MORE LIKE MEATLOAF THAN A MUSHROOM? WHY DOESN’T LUIGI HAVE A MUSTACHE????) etc. Time heals all wounds, but I’ve still not forgiven what they did to SMB: The Movie.

Icky. Putrid. Bad.

Chestnuts roasted by Team Rocket Rose @ 06/28/2004 9:25 PM

Well, I’m probably one of the very very very very VERY few people who rate this movie my favorite movie of all time. Now, don’t think of me as a new gamer. I was born on March 12, 1988 and almost a year later I have my first memories of anything. Holding a controller and playing SMB. I’m a true Retro Gamer and I don’t give 2 $hits about what anyone says but SMB was a masterpiece. Nintendo hasn’t always gone in chronological order anyways (i.e. Legend of Zelda). So whos to say this wasn’t the start of their adventures in the Parallel Universe? I mean, somewhere in that vast wasteland, Koopa must have created more and more empires as themes as SMB1, SMB2 (the real one, not Doki Doki Whatever-the-hell), SMB3, and u know the rest. To you, this might not make sense, but, hey, neither did E.T. for Atari or the ill-fated Legend of Zelda series or the Phillips CD-I. See? There are worse things in the universe if you think about it!

Chestnuts roasted by Dennis @ 06/30/2004 1:29 AM

Typo in my last post. It should read "the ill-fated Legend of Zelda series FOR the Phillips-CD-I. Sorry for the confusion!

Chestnuts roasted by Dennis @ 06/30/2004 1:32 AM

Heh heh. I love this movie. It has it’s…."charm".

Chestnuts roasted by marril159 @ 06/30/2004 1:32 PM

I havent read all the other comments on this article, so I’m not sure if anyone else pointed this out. The Large Mystery Woman who is based on the big fish from the games, also bears the same name as her video game counter-part. Her name is "Big Bertha". Also, the De-Evolution guns are actually modified Super Scopes, the Bazooka-like gun controller for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

Chestnuts roasted by Syxx Gage @ 06/30/2004 4:54 PM

you should do an article on "little shop of horrors"

Chestnuts roasted by Rachel @ 06/30/2004 9:06 PM

i mean the most recent one (maby i should read the posts before i post) lol

Chestnuts roasted by rachel @ 06/30/2004 9:19 PM

i dunno, but i only saw like 1 person mention the fact that daisy isn’t the princess of mushroom kingdom. but thats just one of the many mistakes the movie made…

Chestnuts roasted by Lena K14 @ 07/01/2004 1:46 PM

im fairly sure that the "corpulant" mystery woman in red, is in fact, suppposed to be a spiky.You know, the little red things that Lakitu throws at you and you can jump on the damn things. ><

Chestnuts roasted by g-rant @ 07/01/2004 5:00 PM

Lol….Mario Bros. was bad….but it was still better than ET.

ET was just plain gay.

Chestnuts roasted by Gobind Singh @ 07/02/2004 1:14 PM

I think it’s too late to try to bring back Mario… he had his time… he’s old now.

Just my opinion… I did enjoy the video games when I was a kid… two thumbs up for that.

- Dave
Dave’s Daily

Funny, Strange, and Bizarre!
http://www.davesdaily.com

Chestnuts roasted by Dave @ 07/03/2004 3:19 PM

The movie wasnt all that bad but the movie came out a long time ago

Chestnuts roasted by Dan @ 07/03/2004 8:51 PM

I have a question…after watching this movie several times over the past 7 years, Ive always wondered if King koopa and Bowser were one in the same? This always bothered me because the name koopa in my mind was always synanamous with that annoying driver in the game Super Mario Kart, who was merely a turtle gone crazy. I have played all of the mario games, and i dont recall anywhere Bowser being referred to as King Koopa? Maybe this was a trick to leave options open for super mario brothers 2.

God help us all

benji

Chestnuts roasted by Benji @ 07/03/2004 10:20 PM

Benji, Koopa is actually Bowser’s last name, since he is the King of the Koopas. So he’s Bowser Koopa. Or King Koopa. The little turtles are called Koopa Troopas(I think…I feel kinda blasphemous not remembering) So yeah, he can be called either one, but I always feel odd calling him Koopa, and I remember actually cringing when "Princess" Daisy said "You must be the great Koopa." It just sounds so dirty, and not in a good way

Chestnuts roasted by nothing important @ 07/05/2004 2:27 AM

I believe in one scene the Bob-ombs are shown to be wearing Reebok’s I remember the cars and jsut about anything else electrical ran on the old "Bumper Car’s Electric Cage" type power deal. Come to think of it that was 1991 and they already had GPS as well. Yeesh. Anyways you guys never mentioned the "Hidden Scene" after the credits where the2 Koopa boys are pitching a game idea to 2 Japanese businessmen (One is supposed to be Miyamoto and I can’t remember who the other is supposed to represent)

Chestnuts roasted by Namrepus221 @ 07/07/2004 3:57 AM

i loved this movie and always have. Long live Dago plumbers!

Chestnuts roasted by crowslament @ 07/08/2004 12:35 PM

Ok ok. I’ll give this movie one ball. As in it sucked just one of my balls. I remember mildly enjoying it when I was 11 but seeing it recently has brought that down to a "I could have been watching something better."

Chestnuts roasted by Chazmyth @ 07/08/2004 7:24 PM

L.M.W. is based on the big fish (which I know was mentioned already), named Big Bertha (not sure if that was mentioned in the 200+ comments here).

Great article. I was pissed that the movie had nothing to do with the game, but it wasn’t that bad once I got past that.

Chestnuts roasted by G'Noose @ 07/08/2004 7:57 PM

Gee, where does one begin?

I guess at the beginning…

Well I still remember the day I saw this movie. Being an absolute nut about Mario at that time in my life I knew I had to see it.

I sat on the upper left hand side of the theater. I really feel sorry for the 15 people in the theater on that opening day. I was the only one who saw in humor in this movie. The poor guy who I sat behind thought I was down right stupid for laughing at the scene where Luigi and Mario get the Koopas to dance with each other in the elevator which I think is not in the video at all. Weird…anyways. I laughed so hard at that one scene never to see it again.

I do own the soundtrack and love it.

The best thing about this movie is the fact that a friend of mine after it was over looked at me and was like, “I don’t get it.” We used that against her for most of her high school career.

I have it on my list of top 100 movies.

Chestnuts roasted by Cathi @ 07/12/2004 11:10 AM

I hated that movie. It pissed me off the way they screwed with my precious Mario Universe. And I think they tried to hard to enhance Luigi’s popularity by portraying him as a hip, young, sex god in this movie.

Ugh. Barf. BURN IT!

I think they should try again… and this time, have someone work on the movie who is actually familiar with the games.

Chestnuts roasted by duckyass @ 07/18/2004 5:05 PM

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2004 at 6:41 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.