Super Mario Bros. (1993)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1993
	Director: Annabel Jankel, Rocky Morton
	Actors: Bob Hoskins (Who Framed Roger Rabbit), John Leguizamo (Land of the Dead), Dennis Hopper (Easy Rider, Speed)
	Country: USA, GB, J, F
	Genre: Comedy, Fantasy
	Conditions of visioning: 07.06.2020, Full HD, 14" computer screen.
Synopsis: The Mario brothers (Hoskins and Leguizamo) are plumbers in New York. They rescue a young archaeologist bullied by one of their rivals, and while doing so end up in a parallel dimension.
Review: After recently watching Detective Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog, it was time to discover the first even live action movie adapted from a Video Game. There has been just a handful of animated direct-to-videos before that (source: Wikipedia), but this was big first: nothing less than a big budget Hollywood movie for what is probably the most famous video game of all times. But if you are expecting some colorful worlds and cute animals (like I was), you are in for a surprise, as this movie rather quotes as reference Ghostbusters and Tim Burton's Batman... Wait, what? Yes, I had to do some research after watching the movie to understand how it got there: the movie rights were bought from Nintendo but they had zero supervision on it. And the writers found their inspiration in weird places like the aforementioned films, the very first appearance of Mario as a plumber in a Nintendo Arcade game where he is indeed chasing animals in the sewers, and one level of another Mario game featuring dinosaurs. But I am pretty sure the audience of 1993 didn't go to see a movie entitled Super Mario Bros. for that, and I am then not surprised that the movie bombed like it did. In itself, it is a weird Sci-Fi / post-apocalyptic violent story which is funny to watch if you like that type and that period. But the juxtaposition of elements from the Mario games make it weirder than tolerable: everything is dark, the Fantasy world is a polluted dump, King Koopa is Dennis Hopper... this is all very confusing. In fact it is easier to list the few Mario elements in that otherwise totally unrelated movie: the main characters (with strong Italo-American accents and cliches) and their job, the princess in distress, the name of the game characters including the boss, fireballs... I am grasping at straws now. The worst of all is I think the rational trade of a colorful Fantasy world for a parallel dimension where dinosaurs survived and evolved into humanoid creatures. What a lack of ... Fantasy. Following that on the list are: the character of Toad (a mushroom in the game) being a human later de-evolved into a reptilian (!?!), the cute Yoshi now a Velociraptor lookalike being stabbed after trying to eat someone (!), the icky mushrooms everywhere (not your colorful Mario World green pastures), the bad jokes, the nonsensical story, the punks everywhere, the fact that there is no sound effect or music taken from the games. One good thing? How I kept on watching how Dennis Hopper played with his arms after learning he had evolved from a T-rex. Don't take me wrong, it is easy to watch and I didn't get bored by this profusion of crazy ideas, even when they make no sense, but please don't call this movie Super Mario Bros.
Rating: 3 /10