My Cultural Diet

443 reviews of movies, TV shows, books, restaurants, etc. My own private Goodreads, Letterboxd, and Yelp all rolled into one (more info). Star ratings are 100% subjective, non-scientific, and subject to change. May contain affiliate links, which support Opus.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie

The Super Mario Bros. Movie

This was a real “meh” movie for me. Some of the CGI visuals were impressive and the voice acting was enjoyable enough. (Nobody else but Jack Black could be Bowser, and after seeing the hate that Chris Pratt received, I though his Mario was fine.) But overall, The Super Mario Bros. Movie left me feeling, well, meh. I caught many of the references — e.g., the callbacks to Koji Kondo’s classic soundtrack, Jumpman, Diddy Kong — but that’s really all it was, a series of references. There was nothing bad about the movie, per se, but it felt very safe and by-the-numbers, as if its only concern was checking everything on the “Fans Will Be Pissed Off If They Don’t See This” checklist, and nothing else. (Compare that to the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie, which possessed an irreverent zaniness that made it better than it honestly had any right to be.)


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