After the release of “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” the second-highest-grossing film of 2023, expectations for a follow-up were high. “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” however, has drawn a mixed critical response; after watching it, it is clear why there are mixed reactions. For longtime Nintendo fans, the film is a delightful tribute, packed with Easter eggs, callbacks, and familiar characters that live up to the grandeur of the franchise. By the standards of cinematic storytelling, though, it fell short.
Based on the 2007 Wii game, the film follows Mario and his brother Luigi as they travel across a series of planets in pursuit of stolen power stars. Along the way, they encounter characters like Rosalina and her companions—the Lumas—while fighting against Bowser and his son, Bowser Jr.
Visually, the film is at its strongest when Mario and Luigi land on a new planet or step into a new environment. The animators did a great job translating the game’s vibrant worlds into the movie, and each new planet felt like a distinct environment, keeping viewers excited to see where the brothers would go next. Furthermore, familiar characters from the Mario universe were thoughtfully rendered, and references to the original game’s soundtrack and its classic 8-bit sound effects surfaced throughout the movie. The film is full of details that viewers who grew up with Mario can easily recognize, and these aspects are what carry the film through stretches where the plot begins to falter.
Where the film struggles, however, is in its pacing and emotional resonance. The plot moves quickly from one set to the next, leaving little room for its characters to truly adapt to their surroundings or for the audience to take in each carefully animated place. As a result of this fast pace, the characters never feel fully developed, coming across as more two-dimensional. Then again, Mario characters have always been two-dimensional (literally), so maybe that thinness is just true to the franchise’s nature.
As for the voice cast, the producers did an exceptional job. Chris Pratt (Mario) and Charlie Day (Luigi) brought a familiar warmth to their characters, while Jack Black fully delivered as Bowser, where his sense of comedy became a strong asset to the movie. The film also made room for surprise appearances from across Nintendo’s broader catalog. Seeing characters like Yoshi, a green dinosaur companion associated with Mario, created moments of genuine fun. However, these fun surprises also reveal one of the film’s underlying issues: the film often relies on the audience’s affection and sense of connection towards the characters and the franchise to carry the plot that, on its own merits, lacks substance.
Overall, for Mario fans, “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” delivered exactly what it promised: a vibrant return to a beloved universe. For viewers approaching it as a film first, the experience is less satisfying, with hurried storytelling and plot points that never quite land. Both reactions are valid. The film is genuinely fun, but by the measures of great cinema, it is disappointingly less than what it could have been.
