just vibin

I honestly couldn't agree more with schaffrilas on this. This movie is best described with 2 words: fun movie. Nothing more, nothing less. It wasn't made to be deeper than just a movie that they had fun making and it wasn't a movie to make the audience think, even if they're kids and all so they wouldn't do that too much in the first place. Actually it was a movie that required 0 braincells.
 
However,  I will not shy away from saying once again that I expected something more coherent to the plot I know, or just coherent in general.
It felt all over the place and while that sometimes worked (i liked seeing the combination of every mario game I played in one world), sometimes it didn't (movie bouncing on/off basically all the mario games at random times without really any connection from one to another made me dizzy).
 
In the end, I think the times it worked outnumbered the others. Just by a little, for my high-expectation-superfan ass tho. Nonetheless, I had fun.

Just like bowser castle (if that was considered a castle) and this cloud there was a lot of structure missing, since there's some plot holes or even unexplored plot lines. To be fair there actually is some structure since it has a focal point (!save luigi!), it's just that some parts of the Mario movie universe struggle to coexist in a way that makes sense, but I'll further get into that in the questions for the writers region. For now I'll just say that I'm okay with it settling down for just a little bit of structure, because (to be continued --aka read next chapter) (if you got this far i love you so much)

>old mario game startup
 
>90s mario rap
 
>luigis' gamecube ringtone
 
>the map that toad unravelled looks exactly like the world map in Nintendo ds super Mario game
 
>mario Kart kite from Nintendo 3ds
 
>that scene where peach comforts mario at her practice area when the sun goes down and they both sit and watch the sunset reminded me of that yoshi loves-me-loves-me-not mini game but I could also be hallucinating

The existence of them was more than welcome (since I happened to actually watch the thing on Easter Day too) but some were a little out of place for non mario super fans,
as I noticed watching this movie with my friend who fits into that category. That means I had to explain some stuff to her occasionally for her to kinda enjoy it the way that I do. Not a problem for me, but it kinda feels unfair for the non superfans because the Easter eggs were (too) many. So here I just have the ones that got my 22yo self to scream into a cinema room full of kids. Onto the things:

>Omg the peach song from Jack Black OMG THE PEACH SONG FROM. JACK BLACK
 
>idgaf what schaffrilas says or if he's right about the forbidden use of "I need a hero", the song choices were 10/10 for me because I always love hearing them and I especially love hearing them in kids movies these days since kids movies have awful soundtracks these days, and with that note I'm officially a grandma.
But I don't care because I'm a vibing grandma, and as we established vibing is the entire purpose of this movie so that makes me a successful audience, at least soundtrack-wise.

What was kinda not expected at least for myself who expected a more stick-to-the-lore kind of script, was the  abduction of luigi instead of peach, but what was realllllly not expected was the change in princess peach's character, for the same reason.
I mean don't get me wrong, I love seeing feminism and powerful women in movies but for some reason I expect to see every character depicted the way I knew them for almost 10 years now (since my Mario superfan journey started about 10 years ago). You can call me conservative, but cmon you have to at least admit it's weird seeing all the characters being in character except for 1.
 
Anyways, enough boo-hooing, here's some of my favourite character moments:
>Toad was an absolute sweetheart just as expected, the fanari holding scene was very toad of him apart from the characteristic tour-guide behaviour of his. I also loved all of his possible cousins (the toad army).
 
>Donkey Kong's dumb upfront epaliotis energy and his weird and utterly entertaining love-hate relationship with Mario, their interaction was wonderful at all times and the most wonderful part is that we got lots of it
 
>PENGUS!!!!!!
 
>dk junior!!!!!
 
>numas' dark quotes coming out the cutest way possible somehow, this kind of nihilism at this kind of dose is always entertaining, especially in a kids' movie.
 
>the Mario and Luigi bromance obv, it feels unnecessary even writing this lol

fun fact: jack black is god.

Dessert (ending)
Wtf was that I actually don't really remember anything other than bombomb dying and mario being all stressed out and mario Bros thriving rainbowfully at the end with no princess Peach to be found at least as far as I remember

Main course
The thing with this movie is that the main course feels like large amounts of appetizers and desserts that somehow complete the calorie intake of an actual main course but anyways. Mario and luigi predictably fuck up a plumbing job and so mario having seen the news of some Central pipe being broken, decides to save the city with his brother joining in, until they accidentally fall into 2 different portal pipes that transfer each into mushroom world awesomeness and into the doom of bowser world.
Guess who gets which.
Goal is to save luigi, and we get there by getting through what feels like every possible super Mario Easter Easter egg there could exist with the help of peach, toad DK and other Mario friendly characters.

Appetizer (start)
We start with the epic Mario Brothers rap of the 90s remade with some modern animation, in a universe where Mario and luigi are actually famous plumbers, well, famous for being failures. But that's an expected startup, since it's aimed at kids (and Mario superfans but mainly aimed at kids) so we need an exciting buildup for an exciting good ending.

Drinking game: take a shot everytime I say Superfan
 
As a jack Black superfan and a super Mario long time superfan it was only obligatory for me to watch the Mario movie, even if I don't really watch movies, even if that was at the cinema and translated to Greek, but I will get into the details of the translated experience later since I wanna start on a good note.
 
Ok fuck it, the translation was absolutely horrible because of the inability of greeks to resist translating exclusively English expressions word for word and because it obviously excluded the jack Black experience, so right off the bat if we were counting points we would be in the minus region.
 
I feel so much better now, let's dive into the movie. Spoilers ahead, of course.
Also have in mind I have watched the schaffrilas review, so mine's gonna be occasionally commenting/straight up copying stuff from his.
But let me present the dishes of this paper-like website first.

>a moment of silence for the lack of appearance of:

• yoshi

• bowser jr

• daisy (at least give peach a friend)

 
>i would trade all of my stars of all the Nintendo mario games I have (6 games) ive been collecting for YEARS for more bowser screen time or just more bowser interaction in general but that could be the jack black fangirl in me talking (even if I didn't get to watch it with actual jack black voiceacting)
 
>whats up with Mario's and Luigi's family not giving a single fuck and eating like normal somewhere mid-ending while their children have been missing for almost the whole movie?? Do the laws of time change somehow when they enter the other-world portal?? We get 0 explanation ()
 
>movie opened up a lot of plot lines that were never explored because you later realize that they're not there to be explored but to be noticed by super fans as eastereggs (like the map that the toads unravelled at some point could have Mario beat levels of every world until he goes into the final bowser world) Why not ALSO explore them smh?? don't get me all hyped up and then leave me high and dry (movies a dirty tease)

>I am really pissed off about the peach thing for some reason so I'm gonna go again at it, this time more seriously.
 
So since you do have peach and mario flirt at some points in the movie, why not also have them get together at the end like they're meant to be by the original lore?
I get wanting to have more of a bromance movie.
I get wanting to give more of a feminist approach to generally sub female characters.
I get making changes here and there to get an original result.
But core character changes like that is where I draw the line. I don't even care as much for luigi abduction instead of peach's. Because I think you could have peach be a powerful independent girl and also have her be a soft princess since that's her main characteristic from the beginning of the super Mario franchise.