Warning: The
following review contains spoilers, reader's discretion is advised.
Ciao e benvenuto di ToriJ
Video Game recensioni. This week I thought I'd do something a little
different and review a video game movie; the film adaptation of the
Super Mario Brothers franchise. Allow me to get the obvious question
out of the way, how in the hell do you adapt Mario into a
live-action film? An animated or CGI feature I can understand, but
with real people involved? Most of these characters don't look
anything like real people. Mario is a fucking midget, okay? He needs
a mushroom just to grow to a regular size human being. Well, I'll
tell you how they make a live-action adaption of it, by making it
nothing like the actual games. Hang onto your hats, ladies and
gentlemen, because this train is headed to CRAZY TOWN!
Once upon
this same earth, beneath this same sun, long before you, before the
ape and the elephant, as well; before the wolf, the bison, the whale,
before the mammoth and the mastodon, in the time of the dinosaurs.
No, I
didn't put in the wrong DVD. This is the opening of the movie. We get
some bland animation and some horrible narration about the dinosaurs
that lived before us. A meteor then tell them all to fuck off, but
instead of just causing them to go extinct it somehow creates a
parallel dimension where humans evolved from dinosaurs. I'm sorry, I
must have missed the part in school where meteors could tear open
portals to different dimensions. Read a fucking science book!
I guess there
is truth to the old cliche “You weren't born, you were hatched.”
We
then cut to Brooklyn where a woman leaves a dinosaur egg on the
doorstep of a church, and when the egg hatch we see a human baby
inside of it. Um, okay... Don't want to know how extremely painful
it was for the woman to have pushed that out of her vagina. I have to
say, the nuns seem to be taking this rather well. I mean, if someone
left a dinosaur egg on my doorstep and when it hatched there was a
human baby inside I'd be freaking out! I'd also sell the story to
every news station in town and use it to become rich and famous, but
then again I'm not a nun.
That's Luigi?
He has about as much in common with Luigi as Kristin Kreuk has with
Chun-Li.
After
the biggest WTF beginning of my life, we're finally introduced to our
heroes. Mario, played by Bob Hoskins, and Luigi, played by John
Leguizamo. To the film's credit, I can believe Bob Hoskins as Mario.
He looks the part and I actually enjoy the whole “grumpy skeptic”
that he plays him as. John Leguizamo was horribly miscast for this
role. He looks nothing like the guy, acts nothing like the guy, and
is Luigi in name only. That being said, this is where the film
starts to become somewhat watchable. Hoskins and Leguizamo work off
of each other rather well and I can buy the idea that they're
brothers. I also like the way that they use their plumbing skills to
overcome obstacles in the movie.
Ooh, the girl
is hot!
Then we
have our leading lady, Samantha Mathis, playing the part of Princess
Peach–! Oh, my mistake. Princess Daisy, she plays Princess Daisy.
Yeah, for some reason the filmmakers felt the need to combine the
characters of Peach and Daisy. She has the name, and the romance plot
with Luigi, but for all intent and purposes she's Princess Peach.
She has the look, the plot relevance, and for God sake they dress
her in pink. She's Princess Peach, don't even try to pretend
otherwise, movie. I guess they thought Daisy was just a better name,
and they'd be right. What kind of a name is Peach anyway?
Since we
can't have a movie without a villain, let's move on to Dennis Hopper
doing his best Dr. Evil impersonation.
“See you
later, alligator.”
Wanna take
a guess who this is? Give up? King Koopa in the flesh. Now, to be
fair the idea that humans evolved from dinosaurs is a concept that I
like, it's just executed so terribly and reduced to bad jokes that I
don't care whether or not they explore the idea any further. We're putting bugs in hotdog buns for crying out loud! His hair is pretty
cool, though. Just keep that tongue in your mouth, sicko!
King Koopa
wants to attain the piece of the meteorite that Daisy keeps around
her neck because rejoining it with the meteor will unite the two
worlds into one so he can cross over and devolve the human race
there back into apes, which he keeps calling monkeys, even though we
didn't evolve from monkeys and they are TWO DIFFERENT SPEICES! Also,
he can devolve people with a machine? How?! Evolution takes
thousands of years to take place, how the hell do you condense that
into energy? The Mushroom Kingdom isn't THAT more advanced than we
are. It's just not possible, movie. I'm sorry, but it's just not
possible!
When did the
Mummy get here?
Because
it's a Mario movie the leading lady gets herself kidnapped and it's
up to the Mario Brothers to save her. This is when we're introduced
to the Mushroom Kingdom, and it isn't anything like you'd imagine it
to be. Instead of being a whimsical magical world, it looks like the
bad part of town you never want to go to. We have filthy streets,
people bumping into each other, old ladies with tasers; it's a
pigsty, man. You may as well not even call it the Mushroom Kingdom,
you may as well just call it “New York City.”
BOOOOOOOOO!
What? What? They even
think it's New York in the movie!
Your days of
eating mushrooms are over!
King Koopa
discovers that while he may have the princess, he doesn't have the
meteorite piece he needs and puts a bounty on the heads of Mario and
Luigi who are only described by the people there as “plumbers.”
How they know what a plumper is, but not understand what a hotdog is
is beyond me, but hey why should this movie start making sense now?
Unfortunately
for King Koopa, a large woman in red steals the meteorite piece from
the Mario Brothers and takes off on bouncing shoes... jet pack? I
can't explain it you'd just have to see it for yourself, and when
Koopa discovers they no longer have the rock he decides to devolve
them. This comes back to bite Koopa on the tail when the Mario
Brothers escape and put him in his own devolution machine. I have to
admit, this scene is pretty fun to watch. Doesn't make any sense why
it didn't devolve Koopa straight away like it did with others, but
again if I sat here talking about everything that didn't make sense
with the movie I'd be here all day.
They escape
the authorities and drive off a cliff, but before they can fall to
their doom the fungus saves them. I'm not even joking, the actual
fungus all around the city saves them allowing them to escape into
the desert. Upon learning that the Mario Brothers escaped into the
desert he sends Dumb and Dumber – I mean, Spike and Iggy, who also
look nothing like their video game counterparts, into the desert to
find them. Spike and Iggy serve as the comic relief of the movie and
act like stereotypical dumb people, until King Koopa evolves them so
they act like stereotypical smart people instead. You know, how
Billy from Power Rangers said big complicated words, or straight up
gibberish to make his character sound smarter than he really was?
Same thing here, though grant it not as bad. After the two make it to
the desert and are tied up, so much for being more intelligent, the
Mario Brothers make a deal to exchange the rock for Daisy and set
off to find Bertha, the name of the woman who stole it from
them in the first place.
I actually
really like Bertha. They depict her as a strong woman who even helps
the Mario Brothers out, and when was the last time you saw a woman
of her weight class in a movie, and made up to look sexy to boot?
Unfortunately, like many things in this movie, she's poorly written.
Bertha goes from stealing the rock from the Mario Brothers for what I
can only assume is for King Koopa, only to wear it at her club, have
it stolen by Mario, and instead of being angry about it, she kisses
him and now they're best friends.
Around the
same time, Spike and Iggy also decides they're no longer on King
Koopa's side, and are rather vocal about that fact while being
apprehended. This happens out of nowhere with no scenes prior to
indicate why they made the decision they did. I guess they just...
got smart? Eventually, we do get to Koopa's Tower and we finally get
to see the Mario Brothers in their signature outfits.
High five!
Down low! Too slow, Luigi!
To
be completely honest, I don't hate these outfits. They're probably as
good as you're going to get in a live action film. I'm not a fan of
Luigi having his hat on backwards since I never cared for that
style, but I can live with it. This is the part of the movie where
things actually start to get fun with them hiding in the elevator,
rescuing Daisy, and Mario final battle with King Koopa. Another
thing I like about the film is that they actually make Daisy more
useful than either of her video game counterparts. She puts out
someone who is on fire, and helps Luigi gets the other abducted
girls back home. That is a lot more than I can say for Princess Peach
and Daisy in the games. Though I guess Peach could float for a while
in Super Mario Bros. 2.
Mario and
Luigi also discover that the fungus all over the Mushroom Kingdom is
Daisy's father who was devolved as far as devolution can go by King
Koopa and that's why the fungus has been helping them, so they
defeat King Koopa, save the Mushroom Kingdom and Daisy's father
turns back to normal automatically. No explanation. He just poofs
back into a human being. Does that mean Spike and Iggy are going to
go back to being idiots? Were they ever idiots? They said they were
loyal servants of Daisy's father all this time, so... You know what,
I give up. Mario and Luigi returns home, Daisy chooses to stay to
find out who she is and they all live happily ever after.
Until Daisy
barges into their apartment looking like she came from The
Terminator, leaving off with a cliffhanger for a conclusion that
we'll never see!
So, all in
all what do I think? Actually not that bad. It's as far removed from
the source material as you can get, but for a kids movie it's
relatively harmless. Bob Hoskins as Mario, and Dennis
Hopper's over-the-top performance as King Koopa probably saves the
movie from being mediocre, and they do have a lot of fun nods to the
games. The changes they made actually makes sense looking at it as a
live action film which unfortunately made the few times they did
stay true to the source material make it look ridiculous. If you're
a Mario fan looking for a true adaption you're not going to get it
here, but I can think of far worse ways to spend an hour and a half
than watching this movie.
Try it
Thanks
for joining me here this week, and don't forget to tune in next week
when I begin Fightbruary.
A time to honor the best fighting games that the nineties had to
offer from Street Fighter to Mortal Kombat. You aren't going to want
to miss it.
Nice review :D
ReplyDeleteMay I ask, what is your day job?
This is my day job.
DeleteOh, wow, I'm jealous. You can support yourself financially with the traffic from this blog alone? That's impressive! Wish I could do the same :-o
DeleteI'm not so sure about that, Rick. There's no way a blog with such little traffic could earn enough revenue to support someone financially. ToriJ is most likely a high-schooler living with his/her parents. I mean, it's even possible ToriJ has seen $0 from this blog given how ad revenue on blogs works. In other words, he/she doesn't have a real "day job".
DeleteKeep up the reviews though, they are fun! :)
Let's just say if I were doing this for the money I would have quit a long time ago.
Delete