Bad Movie Appreciation Society: Super Mario Bros.

The recent death of Bob Hoskins got me thinking about some of the great films he’s been in and how I should write an article about one of them as a tribute. Then I wrote one about Super Mario Bros. instead.

Bob Hoskins is perhaps not the most well-known actor but he was still a fine one. He does a great job in Hook (along with Dustin Hoffman in an otherwise mediocre flick) and a does a great turn as a mobster in The Long Good Friday. There’s also a film he was in with an animated rabbit.

Unfortunately for him though, this blog is about bad movies so…

Everyone knows and loves Mario don’t they? The most recognisable face in all of video games, Mario has been around over 30 years, first appearing in 1981 arcade game, Donkey Kong, then known simply as ‘Jumpman.’ Two years later, now with his Mario moniker, he now had his own game titled Mario Bros appearing alongside his brother Luigi. When the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was released in America in 1985, Super Mario Bros was one of the pack in titles. The rest as they say is history.

Mario has been the face of Nintendo and they have certainly milked every nickel and dime they can get from him. As well as his core platform games, there’s Mario Kart, Mario Tennis, Dr. Mario (a puzzle game), Mario Strikers, Mario Paint and about 1000 others. Mario is so prominent in Nintendo video games you sometimes have to wonder if he’s only been put in as Nintendo don’t think a game will sell without him.

So perhaps it was inevitable, that eventually someone in Hollywood would want a piece of the Mario pie. And in 1993, they eventually did.

It’s generally accepted that video games to movies don’t work but to be fair to the producers on this one, there weren’t many examples around at the time to really make that judgement. Plus Mario had a popular TV series on at the time, The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, combining cartoon and live action segments that is still fondly remembered to this day.

Mario was ripe to sell to family audiences with its lovable characters, great music and bright, vivid world’s. So the obvious thing to do is remove all those elements on the film.

The plot of the movie is that there’s an alternate dimension where dinosaurs did not die but instead evolved into people not too dissimilar to humans just with dinosaur rather than mammal dna. King Koopa (played by Dennis Hopper. Koopa is actually the name of the villain in the TV series, in the games he’s known as Bowser) wants to take over both dimensions by merging them using a portal two plumbers from Brooklyn, Mario (Hoskins) and Luigi (John Leguizamo) , accidentally fall through. His plan is then to devolve all the humans on earth back to their primate state using his devolving ray.

Then there’s a sub-plot with Daisy, who is actually a princess of the alternate dimension but has no memory of this as she was sent through the portal by her mother to keep her safe when Koopa seized power and turned her father into a giant fungus. And as every Mario fan knows, when Daisy’s around she’s going to get kidnapped and it’s up to the brothers to rescue her.

 The alternate dimension is your standard dystopian vision right down to the seedy nightclub. Obviously, it’s patrolled by Koopa’s personal police force, the Koopa Troopers. Amongst these are the Goombas. Not the angry little mushroom things from the game, these are giant hulking lizard creatures but with ridiculously tiny heads. And when Mario Bros. are trapped in an elevator with these behemoths, what’s the best way to escape them? Why, make them dance of course.

Mario and Luigi are helped in their quest to save the world by the fungus that grows throughout the world, that we come to assume is controlled by Daisy’s father. It’s always been a curious thing in the Mario world that magic mushrooms are always a positive thing. It’s almost amazing that more of a fuss hasn’t been kicked up about it.

And if a story like that doesn’t win an Oscar, there is no justice in this world.

There are some good things in this movie, like when we learn Mario’s full name is Mario Mario (obvious really, when you think about it). And then there’s er... and erm…what about…hmm.

To give the last word on this, we turn to the man who inspired this review, the late Bob Hoskins. When asked in an interview three questions, ‘What is the worst film you’ve ever done?’, ‘What is your biggest disappointment?’ and ‘If you could edit your past, what would you change?’ his answer to all three was simply, ‘Super Mario Bros.’