The Super Mario Brothers games are still great fun. Admittedly they are light on plot, almost simplistic, but they are imaginative, lots of fun and thrilling with memorable characters and interaction.
'Super Mario Bros' did have a good deal of potential, with talented actors like Bob Hoskins, Fiona Shaw, Samantha Mathis and Dennis Hopper on board, and it was always going to be interesting to see whether the film would be able to make an interesting story that didn't have a huge amount of narrative material to work from. Unfortunately, it is a real let down, and was doomed from the start from trying to do too much and from its notoriously troubled behind-the-scenes.
Video game/interactive film adaptations have a very dubious record, always giving a sense that video/interactive games don't translate well to film, and 'Super Mario Bros' is not an exception. This said, in general there are far worse films out there, while it misses more than it hits 'Super Mario Bros' has a few good spots. Some of the photography is good. Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo do their best in the lead roles and both do a more than respectable job especially Hoskins. Their chemistry and rapport is enjoyable if at times rather too father and son than brothers. Alan Silvestri's score while in want of more recognisable themes for fans is well-suited for the film and has a nice rousing energy, atmosphere and whimsy. Good song choices too.
However, 'Super Mario Bros' has several problems that stop it from being the thrill ride it could have been. The rest of the cast don't really impress that much. Dennis Hopper is always a great pleasure in over-the-top roles, particularly villain ones and when he loses it, and on paper he did seem an ideal choice. The thing is though with a role like Frank Booth in 'Blue Velvet', Hopper was not only over-the-top but also terrifying and the character was interesting, here in 'Super Mario Bros' as King Koopa Hopper is a large piece of unsubtle ham and that's it and there are some points where he's almost subdued, sometimes you expect Hopper to lose his rag and it doesn't really happen. His dialogue also further dumbs down the character, making King Koopa very much a missed opportunity as a villain. Samantha Mathis has some moments of heart and charm but is pretty bland on the whole, while Fiona Shaw at times comes close to out-hamming Hopper. The Goombas are sometimes sort of fun, but sometimes pointless and too goofy.
It is a shame really that the film's production troubles come through loud and clear in the film itself. The direction has a very inexperienced and erratic feel, and like the directors had no idea what to do with the film. The same is with the story, granted credit is due for trying to do something with source material that doesn't give them an awful lot to work with and it's very energetic in pace and never dull. Unfortunately, there is the sense that the writers didn't know which direction to go or how to start, with target demographic/audience and what it wanted to be never really clear (despite also being a bad film with many huge problems, 'Street Fighter' at least got that right). 'Super Mario Bros' constantly feels rushed, bloated, over-complicated and like there was too much going on, and further sadly not all of it was necessary or made sense as a result of not being explored enough. Exposition is also garbled, so that it has nothing to do with the games other than a few clumsily inserted references which reeked of trying to squeeze them in when this fact was realised in production.
As well as lacking in thrills, as a result of the over-crowded and over-complicated story, there is a lack of fun and imagination. The jokes are too juvenile and too embarrassingly awkward to be any fun, and only succeeds in dumbing down so many of the characters (a huge part as to why King Koopa is lacking as a villain). In fact, the script generally was poor, with childish and sometimes misplaced humour and dialogue that clunks badly. Action is very jagged and stop-start. Apart from in the photography and in a couple of neat effects, the expensive for back then budget is not hugely obvious in the production values, where interference and production troubles are second most obvious after the story. The sets are cluttered, too small in scale and quite drab and lacking in colour or dazzle, the world is never fully immersed and others have said it looks like a cheaper and dumbed down 'Blade Runner' which this reviewer agrees with. A lot of the effects are slapdash even for the early pre-'Jurassic Park' 90s.
Overall, has some good assets but, while it is not as horrendous as the universal critical and commercial failure on release and as its reputation suggests, too much of it is lacking for it to be the thrill-ride it had the potential of being with the right execution. 4/10 Bethany Cox
