Directed By Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic

Starring – Chris Pratt, Charlie Day, Anya Taylor-Joy

The Plot – Mario (Pratt) ventures into space, exploring cosmic worlds and tackling galactic challenges far from the familiar Mushroom Kingdom.

Rated PG for action, mild violence and rude humor

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie | Official Trailer

POSITIVES

If you’re someone who attained the kind of entertainingly endearing results with The Super Mario Bros Movie that unlocked your nostalgic nourishment for this forty year old franchise, rest easy, because Horvath and Jelenic’s colorfully chaotic sequel doubles down on that previous execution with an imaginatively sprawling that extends the scope of Nintendo’s irreplaceable cultural impact, particularly with the abundance of limitless Easter Eggs meant to tickle the tummies of its faithful fandom. Between clever sound cues, unexpected character arrivals, and artistic deviations into 8 and 16-bit captivity, it’s clear that the duo of directors have done their homework in emanating the very pulse of this fantastically frenzied environment, with familiarly unearthed aspects of the game play and surrounding worlds that are not only worked in seamlessly to the values of their usage transpiring on-screen, but also give the audience a great sense of admiration for the deviating complexity of its gameplay across that aforementioned time, and while the movie will undoubtedly pay off all the more prominently towards the hardest of hardcore gamers, there’s just as many admirable aspects to the stunning three-dimensional animation on display that transfixingly immerses you into the beauty and vibrancy of the distinguished setting, captivating a luminously big screen appeal with so much depth and detail to the backdrops that truly deserve rewatches, in order to fully appreciate the immense scope and scale of what’s being constructed. While much admiration can be paid to the seamlessly authentic designs of the characters and their vividly conveying sense of expressionism, I think it’s the versatility of the landscapes that truly bring this movie to life with the kind of spellbinding enamoring that cements Illumination’s value to the ever-shifting animation industry, conjuring what I feel is easily their most challenging and exciting presentation to date, especially alongside some enticing action set pieces that flourish the danger and intensity of its characters continuously caught in the crosshairs of the many conflicts enacted along the way. While it’s certainly enough of a treat to experience devastation to these ideal properties that play such a vital role to memorability of the games, it’s honestly the cinematography of its surveying that entices urgency and vulnerability to its fictionally rendered characters, particularly an early sequence between the brothers and Bowser’s son that felt lifted directly from a 21st century martial arts movie, complete with swiftly smooth motions and immaculate framing that capture so much situational adversity to the immediacy of what our protagonists are facing. Even when the movie doesn’t concern itself with action, there’s still an abundance of personality and atmospheric context to the individual frames that merit so much perspective within the psychology of so many of these vital interactions, especially those involving the transparency of Bowser’s newfound moral ambiguity, which elicits an underlining seed of speculation to power struggles that feel too imbalanced to feel trustworthy, inching into some of the subtleties of comedic envelopment to scenes that the script unfortunately didn’t always take advantage of. On the subject of technical components in the movie’s favor, music composer Brian Tyler bats a thousand while sampling some of the musical themes of the games, albeit with a redistributed sense to the instrumentals that prescribe refreshing originality without obscuring the familiarity that feels so distinct in its mental connection to the audience. Being that Mario’s themes are among the most familiar to video game lore, it would be easy to simply rest on the laurels of what’s essentially perfection, but Tyler’s fearless impulses tap into expansion in ways that appraise depth and echoed relativity to scenes that they feverishly correspond with, crafting something entirely new from the seeds of sentimentality, the intention of which this whole cinematic rendering feels objectified with. It also goes without saying that if you’re seeing the film, be sure to stay all the way past the credits, as a mid-credits scene and post-credits scene measure an intended outlook at where this universe is headed, with one particular cameo during the last frame of the movie sure to elicit an uproar to those well-versed few in the audience who have awaited this character’s arrival since this sequel was announced. Lastly, much credit is due to one of the most talentedly versatile ensembles of the entire cinematic year, with everybody bringing their best energies and charisma to bring these beloved characters to life once more. While Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy and Charlie Day have now put to bed any kind of preconceived prejudice in their abilities to fully become these characters, with their sophomore work here never flinching consistently while juggling accents with bigger-than-life presences, it’s honestly the fresh-face newcomers who are most vital to this sequel’s imprint on adoring audiences, such as Donald Glover’s impressively contorted vocalizing for Yoshi, Benny Safdie’s aggressively anguishing emotionality for Bowser’s son, and Glen Powell’s calmly cool as a cucumber personality towards one of Nintendo’s most iconic characters. To say that each of these actors disappear seamlessly into the depths of their respective performances would be putting it lightly, so instead I will elevate my praise into saying that it’s not only the most boldly committed performances of each of their careers, but also the kind of three-dimensional irresistibility in magnetizing presence that could lead movies of their own, and in Powell’s case as this instantly familiar character, very well might.

NEGATIVES

Too much of a good thing proves to be detrimental to this movie’s foundation, as the aforementioned abundance of nostalgically-enacted Easter Eggs proves that the movie is more determined to assemble as much remember-berries as possible to the audience, rather than tell a compelling story, especially in the confines of a lackadaisical screenplay that constantly exhausts itself while attempting to maintain so many individualized character arcs and conflicts, the likes of which never feel like they attain enough screentime to properly flesh out meaningfully. This disjointed consistency would normally be the result of many screenwriters attempting to fish their own respective ideas out to the focus of the movie’s narrative, but Matthew Fogel, the screenwriter of The Super Mario Bros Movie, is the lone pen on the pad for the movie’s screenplay, and instead of crafting the singularly linear structure that felt effortlessly engaging during that predecessor, here he shoe-horns so many individualized ideas that never converge towards feeling like one distinctly cohesive vision to the movie’s outlook, making so many of these scenes feel scatterbrained to the movie’s creativity, especially while dropping the ball towards servicing the established conflict, which feels forgotten as quickly as the twenty minute mark of the runtime, once Brie Larsen’s Rosalina disappears from focus for a distracting amount of time. Because this is a galaxy movie, involving so many uniquely fascinating environments is a requirement for the expectations of the audience, but considering Fogel once again distances so many of his characters, in order to capture so many of these varying planets, it not only gives the script a dejected superficiality that nearly flounders under the weight of its own ambition by its inability to focus long enough on anything to produce depth, but also undermines the value of so many of the characters featured in that first movie, which leaves them standing around aimlessly for some semblance of direction, and the result is this entertaining-but-entirely-unengaging screenplay that definitely could’ve used another round in the writer’s room, or even a deviating voice alongside Fogel, to convey his overindulgence in trying to include too much to a sequel already jam packed with nostalgia. An uninspiring screenplay also lends itself to streamlined emotionality that stands as the single most glaring inferiority from its predecessor, particularly the sensibilities towards heart and humor that felt intangible this time around. It’s not for a lack of trying with the former, as family arcs pertaining to a distanced relationship between Bowser and his son, as well as Princess Peach and her older sister, Rosalina, are certainly there to conjure some semblance of profound meaning to the movie’s messaging, but each time the movie reaches for emotionality, it quickly pulls back towards something clumsily humorous to refresh the interpretive pallet of the audience, and considering so much of the humor this time around feels more heavily geared towards youthful audiences, rather than the parents who grew up with the games, it doesn’t attain a lot of notoriety in the laughs department to balance the lack of influence from its occasional sampling of drama, leaving this film searching for two emotional connections, the likes of which they don’t succeed at finding either one.

OVERALL
The Super Mario Galaxy is a colorfully intoxicating and universally sprawling sequel that prioritizes fan service and spectacle over narrative depth, nearly crushing itself under the weight of superficial arcs and an excessive abundance of characters that never converge into one creatively focused mission towards cohesion. Despite its many glaring flaws with the storytelling, the film is performed exceptionally by an energetically charismatic ensemble, led by disappearing turns from Donald Glover, Benny Safdie, and Glen Powell, as well as radiantly jaw-dropping animation that vividly dazzles the beauty and detail of such a fantastically imaginative world, in turn appraising an unavoidable fun factor to its frenetic fandom who immerse themselves in the innocence of a simpler time, rather than concern themselves with how it didn’t stack up to its superior predecessor.

My Grade: 6.2 or C+