Just a couple years ago, I reviewed Illumination’s first animated Mario movie, the aptly named Super Mario Bros Movie, which was quite a good time indeed. When I heard news of an upcoming Mario Galaxy movie, I was pretty excited. Seeing as the first movie was so well-done, I assumed our mustachioed plumber was in good hands. Right? Well, I saw the trailers, and I had…concerns. And then the Galaxy movie was released, and the reviews started coming in, and…I think my concerns were, unfortunately, quite well-founded. A mostly non-spoiler review to follow…
The movie opens with Rosalina reading to her Lumas in the library of the Comet Observatory. As the trailer already showed, Rosalina is attacked by Megaleg, a robot boss from the first Galaxy game. It turns out the massive bot is being controlled by none other than Bowser Jr, who wants to capture the princess for his own nefarious purposes.
Cut to our main heroes, and we see Mario and Luigi riding motorcycles across the red sands of Odyssey’s Sand Kingdom. Long story short, the brothers end up finding Yoshi inside a pipe deep in some ruins, who teams up with them. And I did appreciate Toad’s incredulous comment not long later highlighting how some random dinosaur is suddenly part of the group. We, as the audience, know why Yoshi is here, but I did find Toad’s reaction (having no history with our beloved green reptile) to be quite amusing.
Well, Princess Peach is visited by a Luma asking for help saving Rosalina and sets off, alongside her loyal Toad, to the Gateway Galaxy, while Mario, Luigi, and Yoshi oversee the kingdom in her absence. It is here that we get a fun little montage of the trio helping out around the Mushroom Kingdom, with recognizable powerups and enemies and whatnot to keep any Mario fan happy. But things take a turn when Bowser Jr attempts to steal the entire castle in his efforts to rescue his father (who has been shrunk and held captive inside Peach’s Castle since the events of the last movie).
It is here that I’ll stop summarizing the story and talk a bit more about what I liked and disliked about the movie. On the surface, the visuals are gorgeous, and I appreciate that Illumination maintains the character designs we’re all familiar with. I also enjoyed most of the music, particularly all the familiar tunes from both the Mario games and a certain other Nintendo franchise that I’ll mention later.
The movie is very well animated, and action scenes were well done, particularly any fight scenes with Bowser Jr and his magic paintbrush from Mario Sunshine. Though, this is where my complaints start to seep in. This is seriously one of the most exhausting movies I’ve ever seen. At times, it just felt like constant shenanigans, with hardly any room to breathe or have any emotional moment. Now, I ended up watching the movie twice, and upon knowing what to expect, my second viewing felt a bit less frenetic, but that still doesn’t change the fact that…
There is not much of a story or character development in this movie. Multiple times, we had opportunities for an emotional scene or one that would further a character’s relationship with another, but nope! I know the story in the first movie wasn’t particularly deep, but it worked. Somehow, this movie seemed to have even less of a plot than the previous one. The first portion of the movie flows pretty well, to be honest, but after Peach’s Castle gets stolen, it felt like things were happening just so we could have a whole buttload of cameos. (We did NOT need the drawn out scene with the babies!)
Taking a break from my complaints, this movie was packed with Easter eggs like the last one. Super Smash Bros fans, or retro Nintendo fans, will be pleased. Fans of a certain franchise spawned during the GameCube era will be pleased. And I appreciated a segment referencing Mario Maker later on. “Meet your maker”, indeed! Oh, and the trailer already spoiled it, but we get a scene with a handful of Super Mario Bros 2 characters, with Wart, Birdo, and a few others, so that was neat.
I have mixed feelings about another character, however, who got way more than a cameo. This character should’ve been a surprise, but since I heard he was spoiled in posters, there’s no point in keeping him a secret. Star Fox. Now don’t get me wrong, Fox was really cool in the movie. His voice acting was perfect. I loved the 2D animated intro. And we even get some inaccurately named barrel rolls! (Old-school Game Theory fans will know them as aileron rolls.)
But what the Falco was Star Fox doing in a Mario movie! And why did he get so much more screentime than Rosalina! One of my personal favorites…nay, one of THE most popular Mario characters, and the most important character introduced in the Galaxy games, and she is reduced to nothing more than a damsel in distress! Say it ain’t so!
Speaking of characters, in addition to a very thin plot, I didn’t like how some characters were handled in the movie. I was super excited for Yoshi, and he’s actually kind of…annoying. I was also excited for Luigi to get a bigger role, and he’s…fine. Kind of…an idiot, really, considering he’s Bowser’s biggest advocate. Because, oh yes, Bowser spends the first portion of the movie pretending to turn over a new leaf, but we see very little evidence of it. Mario does a stupid that makes Bowser big again (is this a spoiler…who cares). Bowser, for some reason, makes a sacrifice during the brief scene in the Honeyhive Galaxy that is out of character and is quickly undone. Seeing as Bowser himself had no way of knowing his selfless act would have no lasting consequences, I see no reason why he would do this.
The best thing, character-wise, was Bowser’s relationship with his son, especially the flashback with the puppet show. Honestly, I have no idea why Bowser claims to have been a terrible father, as there was no evidence shown of this (aside from him being an awful role model, of course, but he certainly doesn’t see himself as such!). And although I really didn’t like Bowser Jr’s voice in the trailers, I actually had no problems with it in the movie. It worked better than I expected it to.
After a long list of sins, I also want to reiterate what so many others are saying. This is not a Super Mario GALAXY movie at all. I mean, we get brief cameos here and there. But Odyssey’s Sand Kingdom got a bigger role than Galaxy’s Honeyhive Galaxy. People have also pointed out how the tone of the movie doesn’t match the game it was supposedly based on, either. The movie is constant noise and action, while the game had moments of quiet as we pondered our place in the universe, which is especially noticeable in Rosalina’s somber, and sometimes even tearful backstory, which was completely changed in the movie.
Oh yeah, lastly, while the movie does have some funny moments, it had some cringey ones, as well. (Sometimes the Lumas were tolerable. Sometimes they were annoying.) And Jack Black’s performance as Bowser was way less entertaining. Clearly, the script was at fault for toning Bowser down so much, but either way, even our dear Koopa King wasn’t as fun to watch as he was in the first movie.
To summarize, the frantic pacing and very shallow story and character development didn’t make for a very good movie. Sure, it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve seen. There was some entertainment value to be had. But the movie could’ve been, should’ve been, a LOT better. And the fact that this is a kid’s movie is no excuse. For one thing, kids deserve quality content as much as anyone. Two, what happened to family-friendly content like the first movie? Does that just take too much effort? And three, the Mario franchise is decades old at this point. Many members of the audience are going to be adults who grew up with the series. How many small children will understand some of these references? Do you think the average 5-year old knows who Wart and Birdo are?
If this is the direction the Mario movies are headed (or Nintendo movies, in general), then I don’t see myself enjoying anything else Illumination comes out with. We were lucky to get one good Mario movie out of them, folks, as I have doubts it’s going to happen again.
Banner image is screenshot from movie trailer