The reviews for The Super Mario Bros. Movie are in and they’re surprisingly polarized. Mario’s return to Hollywood may end up being a box office coup, but not all of the critics are in love with it. It’s currently under 50 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
Why Mario Strikers: Battle League Could Be Nintendo’s Next Multiplayer Hit
Share SubtitlesOffEnglishShare this VideoFacebookTwitterEmailRedditLinkview videoWhy Mario Strikers: Battle League Could Be Nintendo’s Next Multiplayer Hit
The Verge is calling it “the new gold standard for video game films.” Yahoo! But Polygon describes it as “endless nostalgia bait with no hook of its own.” Oh, no! So far the nays seem to be strongly outweighing the yays, but it also sounds like the type of movie you might expect from Minions studio Illumination: overstuffed with jokes, incredibly polished, and maybe a bit empty.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie releases on April 5 and stars Chris Pratt (Mario), Anya Taylor-Joy (Peach), Charlie Day (Luigi), Jack Black (Bowser), and a host of other big-name talent, but you probably already knew that since the marketing machine has been firing on all cylinders everywhere all the time. It’s Nintendo’s first stab at a feature length film since Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo’s ill-fated but morbidly charming 1993 live action recreation, and comes on the heels of the Switch’s incredible console sales and a Super Nintendo World theme park that just opened in California.
Pratt’s weird Mario voice and a brewing fan backlash against Seth Rogen’s Donkey Kong aside, the finished product sounds incredibly fun, agreeable, and inoffensive, perhaps to a fault. “From its very first scenes, it’s clear The Super Mario Bros. Movie is made for children,” writes our sister-site, io9. Fair enough. It also sounds like a fan wiki brought to life rather than a complete story. “For those with even a passing familiarity with Nintendo, watching the film is like cosplaying as the Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme,” noted the AV Club in its review. Here’s what other reviews are saying so far:
