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Super Mario Bros
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by Walt Disney Video
Sales Rank: 3556
Price: $9.99
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I saw this when I was a kid, and though I wasn't exactly a huge fan of it, I did collect quite a few of the trading cards. Saw it again just recently. Though it augments a couple of the ideas from the Super Mario series (Thwomp Stompers, Goombas, etc), Super Mario Bros is nothing like those early Nintendo games. Rather than being a colourful, cute and varied fantasy, the world of the "Mushroom Kingdom" is trashy and dirty, full of crime, cars, cages and sci-fi explanations. Still, I found it entertaining enough, I loved Bob Hoskins as Mario, particularly his scenes in New York as a plumber and his banter with Luigi. Plus, the film captures a style and an era that is thoroughly interesting. <br /> <br />Mario and his kid brother Luigi are plumbers, and after finishing a job run into Daisy, a student archaeologist who is digging up a site in Brooklyn which may be where the meteor that wiped the dinosaurs out is buried. Luigi falls for Daisy, and takes her on a double date with Mario and his own girlfriend. But things go wrong that night when Mario's date is kidnapped and the site where Daisy and her team are digging is sabotaged. While fixing up the damage with Mario and Luigi, Daisy is also kidnapped. Mario and Luigi follow the echoes of her screams down a tunnel and find a gateway into a parallel dimension, where dinosaurs evolved into human beings, and live on a world short of resources and all desert, save for a city run by a man named Koopa <br /> <br />If you're after a more accurate adaption, I'd recommend checking out the cartoon series, or the old "choose your own adventure" style books that were made of the Mario series, if you can manage to find them.
Viewer Reviews
Here's the reality: This film is both totally weird and incredibly awesome simultaneously.
Pros
-Great actors: Bob Hoskins, Dennis Hopper, John Leguizamo all in the starring roles
-Many references to the games (albeit loose references)
-Family friendly
-Solid one-liners, decent script (not Oscar-worthy but above average)
-Special effects way ahead of their time.
-Cheesey, but not in comparison to TMNT movies
-Awesome dinosaurs, weird goombas
Cons
-Little to do with the Mario universe of the games
-Some story inconsistencies
-Ridiculous story (but come on, who cares?)
People have cited this movie as an early example of why video games don't make good live action movies... I disagree totally, in fact I think it's an early triumph for video game movies. To compare to other movies released in that era, I challenge you to watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 and then watch this movie and you tell me which movie is better. The set in SMB is incredible... varying from night clubs, to Brooklyn, to a totalitarian dino-city (no CG, mind you, totally constructed set like in Dark City or Blade Runner), to an endless desert. Lots of thought went into this movie's design.
Costumes are interesting and clearly 90's inspired.
The holes in this movie in terms of science are numerous, as in any Sci Fi flick. The most amusing error is when Scapelli is de-evolved into a Chimpanzee. Anyone who knows anything about evolution knows that humans did not descend from chimps. Also, there is an apparently semi-sentient fungus in the movie...
The acting is great, the story is crazy but fun and entertaining, there's some good humor that is family friendly but not stupid or cheesy, and there's some great visuals. There is nothing gapingly wrong with this movie except how ridiculous much of its premise is, or the fact that it is basically loosely about the Mario brothers.
It makes me wonder how the script-writers approached this project. OK, so here we have two plumbers who jump a lot and travel through pipes... And a dinosaur king... Beyond that the story is mystery. I'd say they did what they could with what they had and, you know what, if they weren't bound by the Mario name, this movie probably would've been even better.
I give it 5/5 stars partly to balance the unfairly negative reviews, but mostly because I really love this movie. I actually was the first person in the country to order it... I preordered it months before its release date on DVD (my birthday). I still watch it probably monthly, sometimes weekly... occasionally daily.
I recommend it. For sure. Give it a look if you haven't seen it yet.
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Super Mario Bros
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