It’s-a-me, Mango,

And I’m here with a review of the Super Mario Movie, which released over our break!

As a big Nintendo kid, I’ve been hyped about this movie for MONTHS. It’s not often a game gets a big cinema adaptation, especially a fully-animated, no-live-action movie. And, of course, the *last* Mario movie adaptation was a bit of a fever dream, and not in a good way.

No spoilers, as always, so I’m going to talk more about the technical aspects.

The animation is gorgeous. The environment and characters are very vibrant and colorful, and each character is very expressive and full of personality. Illumination’s animators brought the Mushroom kingdom (and other Mario universe lands) to life in such a beautiful way, and there are plenty of hidden details and Easter eggs that showed they really did their homework on the franchise (or they just had a lot of big Mario fans on the team.

The soundtrack was legendary, and the friends I went to see the movie with had a ball because of it. A musical classic and good, pop montage songs, and the renditions of classic Mario themes were on point and gave me goosebumps at points.

In terms of voice-acting, it wasn’t too bad! People were a bit hesitant when the cast was revealed, thinking that big names like Chris Pratt and Jack Black wouldn’t exactly take the role seriously and do it justice. But boy, they couldn’t have been more wrong. On Jack Black’s part, at least.

Seth Rogan’s goofy/bold personality fits very well into Donkey Kong already (and he did his classic laugh, too, which was perfect). Jack Black got very into his role, taking on a voice that was much deeper and more menacing than any other character I’ve seen him play. He seemed to genuinely try and act as a character, though he still gave Bowser his own comedic flair, which worked pretty well. Chris Pratt was Chris Pratt, which went about how I expected. Having Charles Martinet (Mario’s official voice actor in the games) voice Mario and Luigi’s dad was a nice touch as well.

The only true gripe I had with the movie, and its biggest detriment would be the pacing. The movie moved *very* fast, both dialogue and plot-wise, making the writing seem a little bit shallow at times. I’m going to give them a little leeway because the movie’s animation and presentation overall was gorgeous, and working with Nintendo on adapting such an important franchise is not an easy feat. There were likely many obstacles on both sides.

Overall, the movie was great. Awesome for fans and kids and everyone else. MAR10/10, go see it!