Mama mia, here-a we go again

I'm no stranger to losing the plot of what it is, exactly, we're all supposed to be upset about. The last time that a movie based on the Super Mario Bros. video game franchise came out, video game fans were extremely upset about it, and called it garbage, and the movie became the highest-grossing video game movie of all time and the third-highest-grossing animated film of all time.

(This is not to be confused with the first time that a movie based on the Super Mario Bros. video game franchise came out and video game fans were upset.)

2023's The Super Mario Bros. Movie ranks fairly high on my tiers of children's entertainment, which is to say that it's fine. I actually like it more now – some 20 (at least) viewings in – because of some pretty subpar stuff I've been witness to since then. But the first Mario Bros. looks good, it's thoroughly inoffensive, nothing is grating, and now three years removed from peak Chris Pratt backlash (Prattlash?) there's really no downside to my son wanting to watch it at any point. Also some good needle drops in there, and it's the reason my son likes "Mr. Blue Sky" and "Take On Me," so that's cool. My actual least favorite part of Super Mario Bros. Movie is Fred Armisen doing an Alan Arkin impression as Kranky Kong, and that's mostly because I strongly dislike Fred Armisen.

So now here we are three years later, and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is here, and it has already become the first animated film franchise to have two films with $350 million openings. It's certainly blowing my beloved Hoppers out of the water!

But Galaxy opened to far, far worse critical reviews than its predecessor, with many (and especially among video game fans) calling it among the worst movies ever made. I felt there was really no way that could be true, and it isn't! But after seeing the movie, I truly don't understand any of the criticisms other than it being disjointed and trying to tie a lot of different things together ... but in a movie blowing Mario's world out to a bunch of different galaxies (which the first movie hints at anyway), it all seemed to be pretty thematically appropriate.

I actually like Galaxy a lot more than it predecessor, and a lot of the reason for that is because it looks absolutely incredible. Some of the criticisms of the first movie were that it shoehorned in a couple aspects of Super Mario's history as a platformer – one scene being a cutesy wink as Mario and Luigi scramble through Brooklyn to a plumbing gig, and one as a training montage set to "I Need a Hero," as Mario learns about how power-ups work in the Mushroom Kingdom. Galaxy eschews the pretense and fully has multiple scenes of platforming and side-scrolling action ... and those scenes are really cool and funny!

The sum total of the cohesive and unifying lore of the Mario franchise prior to movies is "Mario looks neat and jumps." Not even Mario and Bowser being adversaries are universal constants in the franchise. Bowser hasn't even always been his name! There's a story here, more or less: Princess Rosalina is kidnapped by the newly-arrived Bowser Jr. (played by Benny Safdie for some reason, and I'm not sure whether I'd call the casting "inspired," but I can certainly enjoy Benny a lot better when I don't have to stare at his big wet face, so I'm okay with it), who aims to reunite with and free his father and destroy the universe as father-son bonding using Rosalina's power. Rosalina has secret ties to Princess Peach (whose redesign for this second movie, with extremely unfortunate lip fillers, is the one design revamp that I actively dislike), who goes on a quest to find her that takes her through a hub galaxy where the group is introduced to all manner of Mario and Nintendo characters from the past and present. Bowser is conflicted via being half-reformed via his friendship with, well, mostly Luigi and wanting to finally be a good dad to Bowser Jr. And Yoshi arrives and is cute and fun. Much is being made of the somewhat baffling decision to cast Donald Glover as Yoshi, who mostly squeals and grunts and says his own name, but the more I think about it, the more I admire the audacity of the move. And I always support people paying Donald Glover for things.

Maybe Galaxy is a big mess, but what the heck do people expect? It's Super Mario Bros. – this shit has never been deep, not once, and it seems like they're hellbent on moving towards a Super Smash Bros. movie, so more power to them. If it's anywhere near as fun and great-looking as this movie is, I'm on board. Make no mistake: this movie is going to make a billion dollars because it looks like a billion bucks. From dirtbike rides through the desert to an inverted pyramid, to early scene where Luigi and Bowser Jr. just straight-up have a fully-choreographed Jackie Chan-level slapstick fight sequence, to a level-select montage of the Bros. running the Mushroom Kingdom, to a breathtakingly-rendered Bowser puppet show, to Mario and Peach's sidescrolling escape from an ersatz Bowser's castle, all of the animation is incredible. A friend referred to it, derisively, as a "collection of cutscenes," but that's ... a movie? Also, if cutscenes are this great, I sure do want to watch them again. Who needs the game. We have THE GAMES for that.

If the first Mario movie was a little thin on plot, maybe the second one has a little too much of it. But everything in Galaxy is so gleefully over-the-top, and so well-done, that I heartily approve of all of it. While writing this, I remembered a half-dozen other things that happen in Galaxy that I loved but didn't want to get sidetracked writing about. I'm sure I have many dozens of viewings of this in my future wants it arrives on home video, and I'm totally fine with that. I'm looking forward to a few of them, honestly. Because the absolute most important thing about this franchise is that the kids who were in the packed theater – including my own – completely loved it. I saw a girl older than my son jumping up and down with joy at the concession stand when she was handed a Mario souvenir cup. I heard kids cheering and laughing and having the best day of their lives as the movie rolled. And no other criticism of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is needed, least of all my own.

Still, though, thanks for reading.