The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
Director: Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic
Cert: G
Genre: Animation
Starring: Featuring Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key, Benny Safdie, Donald Glover, Brie Larson
Running Time: 1 hr 38 mins
There are moments in the new Super Mario film, sequel to the billion-dollar behemoth from 2023, when its heroes snap back into their eight-bit origins, reduced to blocky figures traversing rudimentary landscapes. Ironically, these retro interludes offer the film’s clearest, most coherent storytelling, an unintentional rebuke to the visual velocity and chaos around them.
This breathless, galaxy-spanning scramble pitches Mario, Luigi and Princess Peach against Jack Black’s Bowser, now flanked by Benny Safdie’s bratty, megalomaniac Bowser jnr.
Other A-list voices, including Brie Larson’s Rosalina and Donald Glover’s charismatic Yoshi (easily the film’s standout), crash in and out of the action as the narrative ricochets between set pieces, tropes and recycled gaming platforms with impatience.
The breakneck pacing and incessant noise can’t compensate for the lack of narrative momentum or heart. Hyperdetailed textures – shimmering grass, gleaming marble – push the visuals towards a kind of digital maximalism that blurs the line between fantasy and start-up tech demo.
The worlds of Nintendo are re-created with fan-pleasing fidelity. All the bunnies in the world couldn’t shoulder the number of Easter eggs rammed into every sequence. Nintendo aficionados may welcome allusions from far beyond the Mario canon. For everyone else the abundance curdles into an overload of untethered references. This bit looks like Lawrence of Arabia; that bit looks like Star Wars.
The dynamic between Bowse
r and his son, and the Frozen-like sisterhood between Peach and Rosalina, are jettisoned as quickly as they are introduced. Subplots remain half-formed. New additions – especially Glen Powell’s inexplicably underused Fox McCloud – barely register. The abrupt conclusion feels like an abandonment. At least it’s short.
In cinemas from Wednesday, April 1st