Day 5 - Super Mario Bros. (1993)

Remember Super Mario Bros, the first and most faithful of a stream of blockbuster movies based on early console games? It was a simple, homespun tale about a pair of brother plumbers who forsook their noble vocation in favour of the even nobler one of old-fashioned chivalry. Setting their wrenches aside in favour of cartoon bombs and flying boots, they bounded across verdant landscapes, chastising any who thought it right to hold pastel-coloured princesses in captivity with a sharply-applied foot to the head.

Critics were unanimous in their rave reviews, and gamers and non-gamers alike wept in the aisles, holding one another close at the sheer joy of their shared cinematic experience. And lo! Games finally gained mainstream acceptance as a valid way for successful, well-adjusted adults to relax. Up on their fluffy pixellated cloud, the twin gods of Molyneux and Kitase looked down on the people, and they smiled.

And life was good.

Bugger, nope, sorry, my mistake. I seem to have temporarily been stuck in the wrong dimension. Back now, though, and normal service will be resumed shortly.

Up until yesterday, I hadn't seen this film for a good few years. Memory told me it was a fun little romp with some nifty effects work, perfect for filling a couple of hours on a bored and braindead weekend afternoon.

IMDB users, on the other hand, rate it a solid four out of ten. In context, that apparently makes it over twice as bad as the original Star Wars movie. Two averagely-scripted, slightly lazy, thematically-incoherent family-friendly sci-fi fantasy flicks with average-to-good special effects for the period - I can't help but wonder where the difference lies.

The truth is, I think, that this is a risk you run when you mess about with a well-loved formula. Never mind that the plot of every single Mario game from Donkey Kong to New Super Mario Bros U could be written down, together, on the back of a single beermat by somebody pissed enough to think this was a worthwhile way to spend their time, people thought Mario and thought of bright colours, drainpipes and showers of shiny coins.

All of which they got, after a fashion, but it was all wrapped up in a dark, Blade Runner-esque dystopia, complete with a bunch of complicated stuff about alternate evolutionary lines.  It's nothing like the game, they said, and umbrella sales rocketed as people tried desperately to protect themselves from all the angrily-flung teddy bears. Don't like this. It's strange. Too unfaithful for the Mario faithful but not entirely accessible to non-gamers, the film has languished, largely forgotten, ever since.

The good

There's actually a whole lot more to like here than the majority of the reviews might suggest. The film looks great - costume design, for instance, is stylised without being too cartoonish, and the set design for Dinohattan is simply stunning. Performances, too, are perfectly adequate; the late Bob Hoskins is reliable even in a role he reputedly loathed, and John Leguizamo and Samantha Mathis make for winsome romantic leads. Dennis Hopper plays it perhaps slightly too straight as King Koopa, but it's fun to watch the little actorly touches he brings to the role of an anthropomorphic dinosaur - the faint sibilance added to every word, and the way he holds his hands up close to his chest to mimic near-vestigial tyrannosaur arms.

Continuing on the dinosaur theme, the puppetry here is flat-out amazing. Yoshi the baby tyrannosaurus is beyond adorable - imagine Pikachu sneezing on a slide made from carefully-stacked live corgi puppies and you'll still only be partway to comprehending the sheer levels of cute in play. Less enchanting but almost as well-executed are the Goombas, Koopa's dinosaur army, nine-foot pinheads with implausibly expressive faces that would have scared the daylights out of me as a kid.

The bad

Once again, this is very much a film in search of an audience. It cannot be forgotten that back in the early 90s, gaming was very much a pursuit for kids, and the Mario games have always been some of the most child-friendly games around. The movie, on the other hand, is dark of setting and sporadically dark of tone - probably too dark for smaller and/or more sensitive souls.

Compounding this is some of the most abysmally poor storytelling it's ever been my misfortune to be perplexed by. Major plot points receive a single, throwaway mention, leaving the viewer baffled and vaguely irate as they try to work out the precise reasoning behind yet another fast and furious action sequence.

Finally, the soundtrack is very much that of a 1990s family movie, which may be an annoyance to those normally annoyed by that sort of thing. Note to film producers everywhere: if you honestly believe your audiences are dim enough that they need their slapstick humour pointed up by matching slapstick music, you are helping bring about the decline of Western civilisation as we know it.

The verdict

I make no claims whatsoever for Super Mario Bros being a great movie, and only a very few for it being a good one. It's a mediocre piece of family entertainment that occasionally uses neat visuals to reach the dizzying heights of average. I could make the same argument for Ghostbusters, though, or The Goonies, or for any of the original Star Wars movies, and look at the pop-culture pedestals they currently occupy.

Sometimes a film is just okay, and that's perfectly okay by me.