Super Mario Bros., 1993
Directed by Rocky Morton and Annabelle Jankel
Starring Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper, Samantha Mathis, Fisher Stevens, Richard Edson, Fiona Shaw and Mojo Nixon
SYNOPSIS:
Two Brooklyn plumbers, Mario and Luigi must go to another dimension to rescue a princess from the evil dictator King Koopa and stop him from taking over the world.
Released for the first time ever on Blu-Ray, Super Mario Bros. was originally released in 1993 to mediocre and poor reviews and has become a whipping boy of the Internet age from shows like Nostalgia Critic and How Did This Get Made?. The first movie made to be based on a video game, Super Mario Bros. earned itself a cult following with regular screenings and meet ups of its fans who will defend the criticisms the movie gets while embracing the ideas it presents. It is famed for having a troubled production with constant script changes on set, and has been described by its stars Bob Hoskins and Dennis Hopper as a “nightmare”.
But, how does it hold up 21 years later?
Based off the Nintendo game of the same name, Super Mario Bros. tells the story of two struggling New York plumbers who get wrapped up in an inter-dimensional adventure as they fall into Dinohatten – a parallel universe created by the meteorite that supposedly destroyed the dinosaurs millions of years ago. This universe is run by the tyrannical Koopa who plans to use a missing piece of the meteorite, held by an orphan named Daisy in the real world, to merge the two dimensions together and rule all. However, the plumbers have other ideas and look to stop Koopa, save Princess Daisy and stop these two worlds colliding.
Okay, so it doesn’t need to be pointed out that the movie resembles nothing of the game on which its based. But what Super Mario Bros. does is take the core concept of the game (plumber saves princess) and adapt it to a movie like setting. Taking clear inspiration from the likes of Blade Runner (they even used the same set designer), Morton and Jankel create a dystopian world that these two outsiders are thrown into with no clue how to get home. The ideas and intention behind the movie are clear, but it never quite reaches the lofty heights it aims for due to various production problems and budgetary restraints. Morton and Jankel should be credited and praised for taking such a risk with the property by taking ideas from the game and putting them in a real world setting – after all, isn’t that what Christopher Nolan did with The Dark Knight trilogy?
But it’s not the idea of the movie that makes Super Mario Bros. such a failure, nor is it because Morton and Jankel are not on the same level of talent as Mr. Nolan. Two weeks before production was set to begin, Disney (who were financing the movie after Lightmotive spent upwards of $6 million on scripts alone) got cold feet and hired another writer in to pen a new draft of the script without any involvement from the directors. When the actors turned up to shoot, they were handed this new script that was vastly different in tone to the one they originally signed on for. Morton and Jankel had plans to create a very adult/teen-orientated movie, but this new script was more clean cut with its tone and goofy with its comedy. As a result, Super Mario Bros. never feels like it knows what it wants to be. At times it’s a serious science fiction adventure for young adults, and then at other times its Mario bonking his head on something with a wacky sound effect.
Credit to Hoskins who takes on the role as Mario, a man who looks incredibly miserable but is still giving 100% to the project. John Leguizamo is perfectly servicable as Luigi and Samantha Mathis is again fine as Princess Daisy, but it’s Dennis Hopper steals the show (not that there is much to steal). Even though he seems uncomfortable delivering the “comedy” lines while he waits for his pizza to be delivered. But because the script is so disjointed and messy, there is no room for true character development or growth so everyone is in a similar position as they were at the start of the movie with very little learned. The constant script changes on set just means Super Mario Bros. is often a collection of scenes patched together with a loose plot and characters.
Super Mario Bros. is not one of the worst movies of all-time as it’s often labelled, but that doesn’t mean it’s good. There are elements of a decent movie buried somewhere in Super Mario Bros., however none of them every come to full light. The newly filmed 60-minute documentary on the Blu-Ray goes a long way to explain why the film ended up the way it did, but it can’t excuse the final product. It’s just a classic example of “studio involvement” messing with what should have been a simple project – “it’s a great script, who can we get to re-write it?”. The documentary does make this Blu-Ray worth picking up, but only if you’re already a fan with an interest. Otherwise, Super Mario Bros. is just an odd mess of a movie that is only good if you look at it from a certain angle.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Luke Owen is the Deputy Editor of Flickering Myth and the host of the Flickering Myth Podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.
Read our interview with Rocky Morton, one of the directors of Super Mario Bros. here.
Originally published November 3, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
