“This movie is a prime example of something that is just... so bad that it’s good. The illogic of the film really only works because the insanity of its existence allows it to.”
Super Mario Bros. was a film released in 1993, directed by Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, written by Parker Bennett, Terry Runté, and Ed Solomon, and starring Bob Hoskins as Mario Mario as well as John Leguizamo as Luigi Mario. It is ultimately about two gritty, working-class Brooklyn plumbers who find themselves accidentally transported into Dinohattan, a bizarre, cyberpunk parallel universe populated by highly evolved humanoid dinosaurs. Once there, they must dodge deadly fungus, outsmart weaponized reptiles, and overthrow the tyrannical dictator King Koopa in order to rescue a kidnapped archaeology student and save Earth from a cross-dimensional invasion.
So, the podcast that I’m a producer and editor on is covering the Mario films—primarily the two animated films—and decided to throw in the live-action version for good measure. And what a decision it was. I have seen this movie once before, which for most people is enough times. It’s just an overly weird film and often regarded as about as polar opposite as a video game adaptation can get from the original source. But I would technically argue: how are you supposed to do a live-action Mario? Those games didn’t have much of a story or lore or anything. They had bright, colorful characters that bounced on turtles and traveled via pipes... and even Nintendo themselves have confirmed that his trade skill is indeed plumbing. So to make him a plumber makes sense, and to have this character randomly find himself in a strange alternate dimension of... just fever dream crap... it’s about as Mario as Mario can be in my opinion, if it were converted to live action.
Now, the story of what happened behind the scenes is arguably more interesting than the movie itself. Originally, the first draft of the script was something Nintendo loved. It was light, it was fairytale-esque, and they bought the rights right away. Then the directing duo of Rocky and Annabel came in. They... actually hated that script that Nintendo loved. So they immediately threw it in the garbage. Instead of that, they wanted to come in with something deeper, darker, serious in tone, and even with touches of horror. They wanted hard PG-13 to light R. They wanted something in the vein of Blade Runner or something... but then the studio heads found out what was going on. And they freaked out, and tensions were high on set. The studio forced them to do rewrites. They wanted more goofy things—more lighthearted stuff that families can enjoy overall. And so they did rewrite it.
They rewrote the script to Mario... every single day. So you had Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo... they stopped trying to memorize their lines because by lunchtime, they would have new and different lines. They started drinking between takes to get them through the headache of the production, and Hoskins has later on gone on to explain how deeply upset he was at the whole thing, calling the entire project, essentially, the biggest mistake of his life.
The entire movie is just the weirdest, most bizarre film out there. You have human villains that you’re supposed to believe are evolved from dinosaurs, and these humans hate the humans in Brooklyn because they’re evolved from apes... and to rule both, he needs a shard of a meteorite or something. It’s a very odd duck of a narrative, and then you see he has the power to evolve or devolve people further to help realize his vision. You have Dennis freaking Hopper as Koopa. I don’t know what to call this movie other than weird. I can’t even call it bad, because I actually don’t think it IS bad. It’s just weird.
Narratively, it has a very typical, run-of-the-mill fetch mission where Mario and Luigi have to do one thing, then go to another place to grab something else, and then complete another mission before they can do what they came for... very video game logic. You have Mario and Luigi literally wearing the iconic costumes of the video game and they look so stupid, but I’d have to argue that is... sort of... part of the charm. If they looked good, it wouldn’t fit in with the rest of the movie, which is... like I said, a fever dream.
The illogic of the film really only works because the insanity of its existence allows it to. This movie is a prime example of something that is just... it’s so bad that it’s good. Even when you’re looking at what’s technically going on behind the scenes, there’s a lot of work going on with costume and makeup, with practical set designs and worldbuilding. The musical soundtrack by Silvestri is actually pretty strong. The cast of characters specifically—whether you like them or not, whether you think they were performed or adapted very well or not—is beside the point. They are all pretty memorable, and you’d be able to pick them out in other movies or TV shows, individually as well as in a group. I actually think on a lot of different technical areas, the film fumbled its way accidentally into being kinda decent. It is one of the only movies I can think of that is accidentally fun... when everything about it shouts it’s a horrible movie.
Unbiased/Technical Score: 40/50 or 80%
Biased/Entertainment Score: 34/50 or 68%
Overall Total Score: 74/100 or 74% (or 3.5/5 on Letterboxd)