Super Mario Bros, the film on TF1: no better than a big ad for Nintendo (review)

A soft Illumination in the shape of a retro cuddly toy, which was a hit, but didn’t charm Première. And you ?

Perfect timing. While Super Mario Galaxy is a hit at the cinema, TF1 is broadcasting for the first time unencrypted this Sunday evening Super Mario Bros., which also enjoyed immense success in 2023, with 7 million admissions in France and $1.3 billion in revenue worldwide. Première is not convinced by these film adaptations of the famous Nintendo plumber (we even find the second one even less inspired), but the children love it and this essential popular entertainment will certainly attract a very good audience on the eve of Easter Monday. Our review:

“It’s not advertising, it’s cinema!” Luigi yells at his brother Mario, while Jumpman (the first historical Mario) plays at a retro arcade machine in the Punch Out pizzeria decorated with photos of old Nintendo games. Super Mario Bros, the movie started less than ten minutes ago (with Koji Kondo’s original theme as an appetizer, of course), and he literally orders you not to consider it as what it is, as what the viewer paid to come see on the big screen: a giant ad for the Nintendo universe. How could it have been otherwise? Nintendo games are, in essence, games before being stories, gameplay before being stories. So we have to find a damn good excuse to transform Mario into a passive narrative object, or, to put it more bluntly, into a film. Well, there isn’t, and that’s perhaps the main problem.

Compared to the games, Super Mario Bros, the movie offers nothing more, different or better. Like Zelda or Metroid, Mario games reaffirm with each opus the modernity of their original playful formula (as Frantz Durupt pointed out in his review of Breath of the Wild in Libération) rather than seeking to reinvent themselves at all costs. By contenting itself with being an official Nintendo product, Super Mario Bros tells a story that is both soft (Bowser wants to conquer the Mushroom Kingdom because) and tart (Mario wants to prove to his dad that he is worth something as a plumber – seriously?), all punctuated by hits from the 80s like Take On Me.

This is the meeting between Nintendo’s advertising desire and the Illumination technique: the Minions studio being in charge, the film’s technique – certainly pretty and polished, but neither more nor less than most animated blockbusters, between hyperrealism and pure cartoon – boils down to heavy-handed nostalgic references and little offbeat comic jabs within large epic scenes. The intro scene, where the Koopas lay siege to the little penguins’ ice castle, is a real textbook case, ranging from idiotic gags in counterpoint to an ultra epic setting with Battle Without Honor Or Humanity (yes, the music of Kill Bill) in the background…

Everything is so casual and detached that the film seems made to be watched with the minimum attention span possible: there is a go-kart chase. For what ? because the characters want to get from point A to point B, and the only way to get there is to use karts out of nowhere. Except for the desire to make a huge Mario Kart-style scene. Does the Mario Kart video game need to justify itself? But does a Super Mario Bros film need to be anything other than a loss leader using all the tips and tricks of retro entertainment wanting to be a hit with both the 8-bit console generation and their children? Probably not, and that’s when we know that the film is going to be a hit and, deep down, we’re a little sad to be so disconnected.

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